Empty Classrooms
by Bowles
Summary: In the end, the sum of Hermione's inheritance from Remus Lupin consisted of three words, three words that would shape the rest of her life and shake the world as she knew it: "magic is dying."
1. Introduction

This is a story I wrote for the Hermione Big Bang ficathon over at Livejournal for the summer, and I have to say it was a lot of fun and the resulting fic was something of a type I'd never even attempted to write before. As such, if you'd like to see the full story it's up at the HBB website [ www (dot) hermione (dot) magical-worlds (dot) us ], along with some _amazing_ artwork by ghot and paperflowered. I'll be updating this every few days, whenever I have time, and it'll be 8 chapters long. I hope you enjoy.

_Disclaimer: _I don't own the Harry Potter series, and I'm not intending to violate fair use, yadda yadda yadda.

* * *

-

"Introduction."

-

The library was quiet with the faint sounds of diligent study, although that would change soon if Sirius Black had anything to say about it.

"I'm bored, Remus," he moaned, rocking back in his chair and resting against one of the shelves. "Let's play a game. Hangman or something."

"I'm studying," Remus replied. He stared at his book with determination, though he'd read considerably less than he usually would during a brief study session thanks to his hyperactive friend. "Just hang on for a minute."

"We could play tic tac toe."

"Neither of us would win."

"I'd lose on purpose to avoid a cat's game," Sirius offered, apparently pleased with his magnanimous compromise.

"Be quiet, Sirius."

"I'll draw a board up right now."

"Be _quiet,_ Sirius."

"All right, hangman it is!" declared the black-haired youth. He ripped a piece of parchment off from Remus's scratch material and began drawing up a disturbingly elaborate noose.

Remus flipped the page in his book and set to learning all about Stunning Spells and their effects on the nonmagical.

_In summary, an effective Stunner should never draw blood, and even an inappropriately cast Stunner should only bruise the target area. This is because the Stunner affects the brain more than anything, and the efficiency of a Stunner usually depends on both the ability of the caster and the base magical power of the recipient (or lack thereof), while the quality –_

"Guess a letter."

Annoyance flared in Remus, but he did not shift his attention from the typing on the page. "No, Sirius."

"Oh, just guess a letter, you prude," Sirius huffed, and when Remus noticed that his counterpart had taken the time to actually charm his drawing of the noose – it shifted forms constantly, from a snake to a vine to a rope of fire – he decided to relent.

"A."

"Oh, hang on one moment, I forgot to think of a word."

And Sirius set to thinking. Remus silently decided that he should've expected that.

"Okay, I've got one," Sirius announced after allowing time for consideration. "Now guess."

"E."

"Damn it, I thought you were going to guess A," remarked Sirius, and he marked down two spaces. "Seven letters, by the way."

"S," Remus guessed.

"Not one!" said Sirius happily. He took great pleasure in drawing a very detailed body for the unfortunate man who was to hang from his noose (presently portrayed as a licorice whip).

While Sirius was busy doodling, Remus read.

– _while the quality of outlying conditions also play a factor. Stunners are notoriously unpredictable in a magically altered environment, due to their simplistic nature and their lack of advanced spell control measures, leading to –_

"Guess."

"R," Remus said wearily, wondering if Sirius knew he was just going to go with the most common letters off of the top of his head.

Sirius's grumbles let Remus know his guess had been on the mark. "One of those, but it was blind luck."

"T."

"None!" Sirius crowed, as he began sketching arms for the emaciated, disembodied torso.

"What's going on here, children?" came James's voice as he sat down next to the two, setting his books next to Remus's.

"About time you got here," Remus said. "Sirius is trying to make me play hangman instead of study for the Charms test tomorrow."

"Haven't studied for that," James muttered. "Great. D'you think I could convince Lily to tutor me?"

"I hope that wasn't a serious suggestion."

"She's warming up, Remus, I swear she is."

"Guess, James," Sirius insisted.

James took one look at the parchment and shrugged. "Looks like 'freedom,' if you ask me."

"Screw you, Prongs," Sirius muttered as he filled in the remaining blank spaces and the hangman joyfully hopped down from the noose. The parchment charmed itself clean and he rested his head on his hand. "I'm still bored. Please tell me you brought the map."

"Of course I brought the bloody map," James said, his tone almost offended. He reached into his bag and withdrew a single, rolled-up parchment, only slightly worn from use (or was that the charm they'd placed on it to appear that way?), and flattened it out against the table. He leaned forward and enunciated clearly into the center of the parchment, "I solemnly swear I am up to no good."

From the center of the page appeared a flurry of activity: thin black lines of ink spreading outward, curving sometimes softly and sometimes in sharp right angles, and words writing themselves, labeling squares and boxes and other such squiggles. James took something else out of his pocket and laid it next to the map.

"Headmaster's ring, complete with Headmaster's signet," he announced. "When I explained to Dumbledore the notices we'd have to be sending out to the Quidditch team due to the dragon pox outbreak, he lent it to me, no questions asked. Although he did have that scary Dumbledore smile. You know which one I'm talking about."

"Oh that look terrifies me," Sirius agreed. He tapped his quill with his wand and it floated upward toward his face, pulling apart and curving around his mouth like the headmaster's beard. "Ah yes, Mr. Potter, I am sure my ring will be put to good use in your hands – I trust your use of the headmaster's signet shall have, ah, _lasting_ effects on our school and the students you, for lack of a better word, _oversee_. I do not need to remind you the values of responsibility, and if you ever find yourself in the unfortunate position of having forgotten those values, I hope you will turn to Mr. Lupin for his calming influence and always welcome assistance. Lemon drop?"

Remus and James's snickers were cut off by a dignified "harrumph!" from Madame Pince. More quietly, the trio shifted together in their seats, huddled over the map.

"Right," James said, grabbing the ring and holding it above the parchment. "Marauder's Map, I am your patron!"

He pressed the signet against the paper. Nothing happened.

"You did it right," Remus answered before James could ask the question.

"Maybe we did the charm wrong," Sirius suggested.

But that theory was quickly disproved as ink began to swirl around the ring, James's fingers recoiling in shock. After several seconds of this the ink seemed to hiss around the signet, and James removed it delicately.

_Written across the center of the parchment in elegant cursive appeared: __Good evening, Headmaster. Your domain has been secured._

And suddenly where there were only hallways and corridors there were now dots and names, the students and faculty of Hogwarts. The rooms were now labeled for what function they served, and the edges of the castle were more clearly defined.

"Look," breathed Remus, "you can even see Dumbledore in his office!"

"Merlin, I didn't know he paced so much," Sirius remarked. "Maybe that's how he stays in shape."

"I like how it shows the moving staircases and some of the fake doors," said James, pointing to an area near the Gryffindor common room. "This would've been dead useful as a first year."

"No kidding," concurred Sirius. "I never knew there were so many empty classrooms in the school. I wonder if it's always been that way?"

Remus didn't know what it was about the remark, but it bothered him immediately. Sirius had a point, to be fair, and it was something he'd noticed during his time at the school. There _were_ a lot of empty classrooms, and now he was led to wonder if they'd always been empty. He'd always assumed so, but the whole issue persisted at the recesses of his mind, even when he tried to push it away.

"Moony?" James was saying. "You all right?"

"Yes," he said, shaking his head and smiling. "Just zoned out for a moment. What were you saying?"

"I was saying that we'll wait 'til Wormtail's done with detention to start the personality charms."

"I can't wait for those," Sirius exclaimed, rubbing his hands together in childish excitement. "I've got a long list of sample insults I'd like Padfoot to use for intruders of the map. Hopefully the charm will expand the list from there."

"Yes, that sounds great…"

He didn't pay attention to the rest of the conversation. Numbers flew threw his head – how many students could Hogwarts have at the moment? In his Gryffindor class, there were about twenty, and he knew his class was larger than Slytherin, and either equal to or just less than Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff. The other years were a trickier matter, although if he assumed that the counts were the same…

James and Sirius left at some point. He hoped it was because the conversation had come to a natural end, and not because he had killed it with his sudden withdrawal into his own mind. But he was focused on another issue, as he tended to do from time to time, and they understood. He would apologize later.

Fed up with his poor estimates of the student population of Hogwarts, he stood and walked up to Madame Pince's desk. When she didn't look up, he rapped his fingers on the wood, and when that didn't work he cleared his throat. She didn't seem to notice.

Finally he spoke: "Madame Pince."

"Yes?" she said, still reading her book and frowning over something.

"I was wondering where I could find information on Hogwarts's enrollment counts."

Her eyes travelled upward in her customary glare. "You can either look in the releases for the year to find an official enrollment count of the 1976-77 school year provided to the Ministry of Magic, or you can look in one of our student books on the database shelves. They're old and worth more than your life, I'll have you know."

"I don't doubt it," he said. "Thank you, Madame Pince."

The student books were enormous, and he quickly realized that perhaps the stern librarian hadn't been joking about their worth. He wasn't even sure if it would be possible to lift one without someone else's help, or at the very least a strong _wingardium leviosa_, but thankfully the shelf was slanted and the book was set against it in such a way that indicated that it wasn't intended to be read on a table. Instead, he opened the front cover of the book as it lay on the shelf, and flipped through to find the enrollment count of his year.

It was there, a nice respectable number in red ink: 678.

Not half bad, and somewhere around where he would've guessed. According to the same section, the estimated population of all of magical Britain was somewhere around 100,000, which didn't make sense when he thought about it. Of course, not all wizards and witches ages eleven to seventeen went to Hogwarts; he knew full well there were multiple smaller schools throughout Britain that many families preferred, and also vocational schools throughout the region (and, of course, foreign magnet schools like Durmstrang that unlike Hogwarts were open to foreign students). Several people in Godric's Hollow educated their children at home, which he thought was a horrible way to prepare for O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s, but to each his own. If he had to guess, he'd say the population for his age group was anywhere from 2,000 to 7,000, which quite nearly fit in with the estimated population, which he assumed was somewhere on the high side. This was made even more realistic when he considered the usually healthy immigration ratio (although that had lagged in the last half-decade).

He flipped back several hundred pages and landed on the year 1743, which he knew from History of Magic had been one of the last years before the penultimate goblin revolt and subsequent civil wars. The enrollment count: 2,134.

He stared in surprise. So _that_ was why there were so many empty classrooms. His brain boggled at the thought of the student population being three times larger than it presently was. Did they have multiple teachers for each subject? (He didn't even know how his teachers had enough time to teach their classes as it was!) Was Sorting a ceremony, or an all day event? (He hated and loved the hour-long ceremonies at the same time, but couldn't imagine watching the Sorting for over three hours.)

And finally, he wondered, was this because of a population decline or the ascension of other educational options? The estimated population size was around 240,000, although he wasn't entirely sure how accurate this number was. Even in the present day magical census measures were notoriously unreliable.

(The summer before, Mr. Potter, after being informed by one of his pompous Ministry colleagues on a home visit that the such-and-such department provided aid to 20,000 wizards and witches in England alone, had hidden his snort by stuffing his face into a mug of ale and winking at the boys from across the dinner table.)

He looked up a few more enrollment numbers from the separate time periods – each similar to the original counts – ran a few quick calculations on a separate piece of paper comparing the two enrollment numbers, and unsurprisingly found that there was no possibility of the enrollment numbers coming from similar overall populations (in fact, he calculated a statistical probability of zero, something that he hadn't expected). He assumed that he may have made an error in his math, but his mother taught mathematics at a Muggle school, and he'd always had a natural talent. And the estimated population figures alone supported his theory.

It seemed that magical populations were decreasing at a time when every other population of the world was increasing. He knew he couldn't have been the first one to make such an inference; after all, the facts were fairly simple. Still, the problem plagued him as he grabbed his things and stuffed them in his book bag thirty minutes later, throwing the strap around his shoulder and heading out of the library. He was so used to magic – so used to the electric mysticism of the castle buzzing in his veins, and even his own twisted, natural magic – that he couldn't bear the idea that magic was on the decline.

He decided to save the idea for later inquiry. Still, he couldn't help noticing how many empty classrooms littered the halls of the school, and he couldn't help thinking about the students they may have once housed.

-

She stepped over a Quaffle, narrowly avoided banging her knee into a tipped-over chair in the middle of the living room, and almost fell flat on her face thanks to a stray box of Chocolate Frogs.

She sighed. Harry and Ron really needed to clean their flat.

She spent nearly as much time there as they did, but she steadfastly refused to clean it at all, as that would be surrendering to their inherently boyish slothfulness and drudgery. And that she would not do. They would learn the value of cleanliness, even if it took her a broken leg and eight bruises a week to teach them.

Harry she could forgive for his distaste of cleaning, as he'd been forced to do it for days on end during his time with those terrible people. But Ron!

She found the coffee table with her hand – bending over several cartons of take-out – and grabbed the note stuck to a coaster:

_Staying with Charlie tonight to help with the dragon transport. Back tomorrow at noonish._

_Feel free to clean the flat! (Kidding.)_

_Ron_

She tapped her finger to the note and it disintegrated. In all truth, she couldn't exactly be certain it was meant for her, but by now the boys were used to her spending half her time in their home. It wasn't as if they could be bothered to come out to her flat, just a block down the street… oh no, that would be too inconvenient…

The fireplace lit up, knocking her out of her thoughts, and she braced herself. She relaxed when a silver stag stepped into the living room and announced in a kind voice, "Noticed the wards change. Make yourself at home. I'm just grabbing some corrections on a test."

The silver strands running through the stag dissipated, and thus the Patronus became just air. She cleared a space for herself on the sofa and sat down.

It really wasn't a bad flat, she thought as she waited. Nice view, nice area. Terrible upkeep, but you could hardly blame the landlord for horrid tenants, could you?

The furniture was fine, mainly since she'd selected it. Harry hadn't cared much about the prices, but she'd made sure that he didn't go for anything too expensive; as she recalled, Ron had insisted on a device that functioned as refrigerator, television, and oven (Merlin knew how). "Look how convenient it is! It's amazing."

Convenient. She scowled. Typical.

The sofa was nice enough, comfortable and newly stained with liquor and grease. She particularly favored one of the armchairs, but at the moment it was serving as a resting place for all of Ron's Quidditch magazines, and she resisted the urge to bin them.

The table was Harry's domain. He liked to perch his feet on it and smile at her irritation – "The wood will be fine, you worrywart," he would say – and use it as a desk on occasion, sitting on the carpeted floor and relaxing in front of the television (usually turned to football, Ron's new obsession: "Although it's still a distant second to Quidditch!") with his legs sprawled underneath it, his back resting against the side of _her_ chair.

Several of his papers were on it. Mainly tests and "official Auror business" – which usually was a codeword for procrastination on seemingly pointless forms and releases, etc – but there was also a folder. That it in itself was not exceptionally interesting, but the folder read "REMUS LUPIN" on the front in big blue letters.

And that _was_ exceptionally interesting.

As far as she had known Andromeda had taken care of most of the Lupins' estate business, although she did remember Harry having to go to a few appointments with this solicitor and that attorney, and so on. The main issue seemed to be Remus's lycanthropy and how that affected his lineage, inheritance, and the like, and whether the concept of property applied equally to him. (Hermione had threatened to take the issue to the Minister himself, but the next day some forms came with Kingsley's signature commanding proper respect for the Lupins' estate. How nice it was to have a competent official in charge!)

She crossed her legs. She really wanted to read the file. But it wouldn't be proper. Harry would be home any minute now.

She strained to hear the ticking of a clock or the hissing of a pipe, but she heard nothing. Quite literally nothing was happening. She was entirely alone in all senses of the word.

Oh sod it, she thought, and grabbed the folder.

That was when the fireplace crackled and Harry emerged, soot in his hair.

"Evening, Hermione," he said, and she nearly jumped. Blasted luck! He looked at her for a moment and grinned. "I see you got started without me."

"Pardon?"

"I wanted to talk to you about that folder today," he replied, nodding in her direction. He took off his outer robe and hung it near the fireplace, fluffing his hair with his hand. His efforts at grooming largely failed. "There's some interesting stuff in there. What'd you think?"

"I hadn't actually gotten around to reading it," she admitted.

"Hm. Scoot, will you?" Hermione made a show of glancing at the pile of clothes next to her, and he irritably drew his wand and shook it at the heap. Trousers and shirts began a violent dance toward the washer, and he took a seat next to her. "It wouldn't kill you to help us out a little, you know."

She ignored him. "What's in here?"

"Some documents Remus left us," Harry responded. She perked up. "Yeah, us. I've skimmed through them. He left me some journal entries and Pensieve memories – I've got the memories stored in my room now – and he left Ron some memories, too, more of the amusing ones, I think, and also some old Quidditch articles he thought Ron would enjoy. He left you some of his academic papers and the like. I didn't actually read through it all, since there's quite a bit there, but I think you'll enjoy them. Go ahead, open it."

She paused a second and then did as he said, and she immediately noticed how much heavier the folder seemed – it had obviously been charmed to be lightweight and portable, as it held four times as much as she ever would have guessed. The folder was in fact separated into three sections, and she couldn't help but notice that her own section dwarfed Harry's.

"What do you mean by academic papers?" she asked, spreading the folder on the table in front of her. "Surely not old tests, I hope."

"No, I think it was stuff he'd written, some of his correspondences. Andromeda didn't know too much of it," said Harry, shrugging. "But Remus was a smart fellow. I'm sure anything in there would be immensely valuable, and interesting to boot."

Hermione nodded numbly and stared at the folder, the creased yellow parchment in front of her. Something about it was astounding: that on the table in front of her lay the intellectual legacy of one of the most intelligent men she'd ever met. A great sense of responsibility suddenly settled itself upon her, but it was accompanied by the quick excitement that was present in the feel of an unopened book waiting to be studied and obsessed over.

She nodded numbly again when Harry asked if she wanted dinner, and the evening passed by without her noticing. Afterwards she couldn't help but feel that she had been terrible conversation, but Harry didn't seem to mind, and while she didn't ask outright, she had the impression that he understood her silence.

"Here, I've got another folder like that," he said after they had put away their dishes, and he reached into his bag and withdrew a bright red folder, handing it to her. "You can put all your stuff in there. I think it will take even you a while to get through it."

"Right," she said. She looked at the original folder. "Right. Thanks."

She began the careful process of transferring the papers from one folder to another, but something about the magic of the folders made the process relatively painless, and there she stood with her lone folder, much heavier than it felt.

"You can look at the stuff he left me after I've gone through it," Harry offered. "I'm not sure how interested I'd be in his academic exploits, but Remus was your friend as well. The three of us could even make a Pensieve run together, to one of the good memories."

"Yes," Hermione replied. She tucked the folder under her arm. "I think I should be heading home. I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Course," Harry said, nodding. "Night."

He plopped down on the sofa and turned on the television, letting her know that it was all right to leave and begin devouring her latest gift from the dead. She didn't remember the last time she'd felt so grateful.

She had the patience to wait until she had changed into her night gown with a cup of water to begin going through Remus's papers. She curled up in her favorite chair near the window and read by the light of a lamp shaped like an ear (a gift from George). Indeed, several of the papers were letters, although the subjects were somewhat foreign to her; while she recognized several theoretical questions of magic, she hoped that there would be something else in her inheritance that would make the correspondence clearer to her. Suddenly it became apparent to her just how hopelessly clever Remus had been, and perhaps, she thought, these papers would make more sense to an Unspeakable. It was a depressing observation.

Minutes into her search she came upon a large stack of papers, bound together and obviously meant to be read together. There was no title; only the name, "Remus J. Lupin," and a crescent scribbled in the center of the page. She flipped to the next page, and on this page lay Remus's familiar, elegant cursive. Hermione set to reading.

_Something is wrong with magic._

_While the Muggle world around us has industrialized – while the developing countries of that Muggle world are still industrializing, without the benefit of magic but with the benefit of ingenuity long since lost in the magical community – our world has stalled. Technology remains, but the innovation once seen in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance period has vanished. We have abandoned our continuing search into the nature of magic, the public search into the nature of magic, and have left that inquiry to the leisure of secret organizations run by bureaucrats half-interested in science and discovery._

_It is difficult to pinpoint the exact break in philosophy between past and present. We still value ingenuity and curiosity on some basic level: just look at the fame of Adalbert Waffling or Albus Dumbledore, two of the most well-known wizards and researchers of the past several hundred years. But they are a rare breed these days. More common are the commercial geniuses, the Devlin Whitehorns and Gaspard Shingletons of the world. Not that there is anything wrong with the commercial aptitude of those two men – it's just indicative of the difference in thought._

_The Enlightenment of wizardry has ended, and the commercialization of magical society has begun. No longer are we interested in the nature of magic, or the composition of elements, or the limitations of human progress; now we are interested in the fastest broom or handiest cauldron. Which is good and fine, except that instead of indulging ourselves in both areas, we have forgotten the one and obsessed over the other, and as a result we find ourselves in a pitiable state nowadays._

_The magical world has fallen behind the Muggle world. Most wizards can't even pronounce the word "electricity," maybe the most startling development since movable print. Electricity, for the uneducated, is the Muggle form of magic: a magic based on manipulation of science and cooperation with nature. We have refused to adapt and advance ourselves in the most basic ways, and as a result, our sphere has dwindled, and Muggle hegemony has only increased._

_But this is not a political tract. This is a tract about the state of our world, not the states of our world, and that is why I speak of Muggles._

_If there is one difference between ourselves and Muggles since the year 1800, it is that Muggles have continuously interacted with their environment and we have not. Muggles have tried to change the world around them; we are content to accept the world we are given, for that is how it has always been and always should be. Our delusional and illogical obsession with tradition has been our undoing, and as a result haven't noticed that our world is coming apart at the seams._

_To be blunt, magic is dying._

_Dying a slow death, but dying more and more every day. In the following document, I will, if time allows, prove this to you, keen reader, but I am not a harbinger of doom: I hope to identify problem areas and possible solutions. I will be the first to admit that my research and resources are limited, although I will do the best I can with what is available to me, and hopefully my work will open the door for someone more distinctly qualified than myself._

_At a basic level, there are several problems with our society as currently constructed. They are, as follows: our hollow acceptance of past constructions and spells, leading to the decay of magic in the surrounding area; the destruction of magical environments and preservations, which help to balance out the aforementioned "magical drain," to later be explained in full; the lack of transparency in our highest research facilities, most of which are controlled by unyielding conservative authoritarian governments; the lowering magical population as a result of these factors, which, in a unique paradox, only increases the decay, and so forth; and the disturbing trend of Muggle resilience and cognizance of magic, already partially documented by the esteemed Bleinhelm Stalk, and its negative connotations for our future and possible role in our recovery._

_And one more note: if you are reading this final paragraph, it means I never had the chance to finish my work. No harm – this is something I half-expected. I hope you will forgive me for any incompletion or error in my calculations or conclusions, which I would have hoped to correct and finish with outside help in due time, but I believe my argument is relatively strong in and of itself, and quite essential to our continued prosperity and progress as a society. If any of these ideas resonate within you, I urge you to take my work and improve upon it._

_Signed on the date of 1 August, 1985,_

_(And edited again on 15 December, 1993 and 12 April, 1998)_

_Remus John Lupin_

Hermione set the folder down and stared out the window. It was, to say the least, an interesting thesis statement, and it was a question that she herself had found herself asking on occasion, although she'd never had the presence of mind to follow her inquiries.

But he had. And that was why she admired him, was it not?

She wanted to continue, but at the same moment she knew she shouldn't, knew that some things required time to settle. So she let the folder rest, and she got to her feet and went to the bathroom to fill up a nice warm bath. She undressed and sat naked on the marble edge of the bathtub, thinking of magic and Muggles, enlightenment and acceptance, the knowledge of the past and the unstoppable intellect of the future. And she wondered.


	2. Population

"Population."

-

_Consider, if you will, Hogwarts, the most esteemed school of witchcraft and wizardry in all of the British Isles, and possibly all of Europe – home to some of the greatest wizards and witches of our time, and, regrettably, some of the most terrible._

_The younger students giggle and older students blush when you ask them about the empty classrooms of Hogwarts. Those classrooms are a part of what Hogwarts is, and they are generally accepted without question; it's as if the Founders put them there just so teenagers had a place to snog! Something, though, tells me that they didn't._

_Let's assume the latter for the sake of curiosity. Why, then, is the school so big in comparison to the student body? You might assume that the castle has always been that spacious, and that the Founders chose a castle that would be overly large for their class sizes. This is not true. In fact, in its early years, Hogwarts was actually expanded twice – in 1096 and 1202, presumably to accommodate a growing student body. Assuming that the castle has not grown in size since, why, then, are there so many empty classrooms now?_

_It is not because of an increase in competition from other schools. Hogwarts actually commands a greater share of the magical population's education than it ever has – in 1202, for example, Glenrive's School was quite influential, and nearly equal to Hogwarts in power and prestige. Now communal and vocational schools litter the country, but Hogwarts remains the number one school in Britain for aspiring wizards and witches._

_The remaining possibility is a sharp drop in the magical population as a whole. One might expect this to be the result of constant warfare, but population has actually declined more rapidly in peaceful periods than in times of war! Diseases are relatively controlled, and life expectancy has gone up. The Muggle population has sharply skyrocketed. Why aren't magical populations doing the same?_

_Is it a natural tendency? Is magical Britain so industrialized and advanced that we encountered zero growth when the rest of the world hadn't even hit their population boom? No, this seems untrue, considering that Muggle Britain is considerably more advanced than magical Britain at the current time and the country is still growing. Perhaps, then, Muggles are simply more intent on reproducing. Perhaps they need more children, and more labor._

_Or perhaps less and less Muggles are being born with the magical gene. Perhaps magic has ceased to spread._

_Perhaps._

_-_

Remus straightened his tie in the mirror of the front hall, silently cursing himself for not just going with a clip-on: Sirius had assured him that a Windsor was "no big deal," and that it was "like riding a broom," but that metaphor assumed that Remus had tied a tie before, which he had, though that was hardly the point –

He finally convinced himself to stop fiddling with it and lay his hands at his sides. The tie was fine, he reasoned. A sight better than Frank's would be, at any rate, although Frank was a natural slob so that didn't count for much. He could always get Peter to fix it later. Peter had a gift for the minutest details.

He grabbed his present off of the vanity table and tucked it under his arm. He peeked around the corner of the doorway, but neither bride nor groom nor guests were visible, and so he delicately made his way into the living room, placing his gift on the sofa with several others.

Voices bounced across the walls from the kitchen, and so Remus made his way forward. Inside he found Alice and Peter arguing over something.

"I'm just saying that we shouldn't assume the Death Eaters are in a weak position…" Alice trailed off as she saw Remus. "Oh, Remus! You look lovely."

"And you as well, Alice," he said politely, and honestly, as she was quite a catch in her favorite robes of periwinkle.

"Your tie's a mess, Remus," tsked Peter, and he hurried over to fix it, his hands deftly making work of the Windsor. "You should've just worn a clip-on."

"I know, I know, but Sirius insisted." Peter straightened and smoothed the knot, stepping back to observe his handiwork. He nodded, and Remus smiled. "Thanks, Peter."

"No worries, you know that would've bothered me for the entire service." Peter coughed into his hand and straightened his handkerchief in his front pocket. "Sirius and James are back in one of the guest rooms, I think."

Remus left the two to their private counsel and navigated the next hallway, wound up the staircase, and went straight for their favorite guest room, the room with the portrait of Alvin the Drunk sitting near the window. Unsurprisingly, that room usually went unoccupied, but it made for a great place to have an interesting conversation.

He found his two friends inside, bickering over something or other.

"I just can't do this…" That would be James. He frowned.

"C'mon, Prongs. Have a little faith."

"I know this won't work out."

"Just because there's been problems in the past doesn't mean it can't work now. You need to follow your heart on this one, mate."

"And if my head is saying no?"

"Am I interrupting something?" Remus asked, trying to keep the concern out of his voice. Sirius loved to refer to him as "our darling old biddy."

Sirius sighed and dropped his hands from James's shoulders. "No, not really. I'm just trying to convince James to accept a five hundred Galleon bet as my wedding present."

"A bet?" asked Remus, bemused.

"Yes," said James darkly. "He bet five hundred Galleons on the Cannons to make the Euro finals and now he wants to mitigate that cost through my wedding present. As much as I'd love to tell you that I can cover you on this, Padfoot, Lily would have my bloody head. I hope you realize how scary that woman can be."

Sirius shuddered. "Oh, don't remind me."

"So, just to clarify, you're not nerve-wrackingly nervous about your impending marriage," Remus said, carefully gauging James's reaction.

"Not really," James replied, shrugging. "I mean, I'm bloody anxious, yeah, but the nervousness… whether she's the right girl, you mean? For so long I was convinced she was, and then after I proposed I suppose I started to properly freak out about it, and the idea that this was it… but then I was sitting there one day bemoaning my insecurity and whatnot and I decided that I needed to talk to someone and she was the first person to enter my mind. And that settled it. Even when I'm unsure of everything, at the end of the day she's still the person I trust and depend on and that I know would die for me, besides you lot, and she's a damned lot more attractive than any of you are, so that was that."

Remus tried to discern whether James's tone and smile were genuine, whether his eyes really widened like they did during a laugh, or whether they remained flat as they did in class photographs. He was struck by the presence of unshaven facial hair on James's cheeks, a far cry from the boyish face that had always sat in the back of Remus's mind when he thought of his friend, and it struck him that James was a man now. That they all were men.

"Good," he finally heard himself saying. "You need to shave, by the way."

"Damn it, Moony, are you turning into Peter?" James cried.

The ceremony took place in the back garden, an affair that was equally lush and modest. There were no more than forty guests, split up into several rows of folding chairs on either side of a path of rose and lily petals. A veranda had been built in front of the largest tree in the garden, an old oak that shaded the guests from the late summer sun. To James's side stood the three Marauders, Sirius closest and Remus furthest; to the other side stood Alice and Dorcas Meadowes.

Benjy Fenwick began the tune on the organ and the bride emerged from the steps of the back porch, accompanied by Minerva. It looked to Remus as if she were beaming and crying at the same moment, and he was temporarily saddened that neither Lily's nor James's parents would be here to see the wedding of their children. If anyone, though, Minerva had to be the choice – she'd been unusually close to Lily since her first year at Hogwarts, and Lily had once said that the Transfiguration professor had been her Muggleborn escort to Diagon Alley. He even thought that a tear might be present in the elder witch's eyes.

Sirius looked fit to burst with laughter and excitement, and Peter nervously fidgeted back and forth. James smiled at his bride-to-be with a calm sense of joy, and he took her hand after she'd kissed Minerva's cheek and stepped out of her grasp. He helped her up the steps to the veranda, her long dress catching behind her, and the two smiled at each other as Albus Dumbledore, peering down his half-moon spectacles and beaming widely, began to speak.

"Dearly beloved…"

He noticed that Lily's dress had green tracing, the same emerald as her eyes. That would have been James's idea, he thought, or at least a development to appease him. James could go on and on about her eyes. It was sickening and cute at the same time.

Green was the color of youth and vigor, envy and misfortune. An unfortunately beautiful color. He chewed this thought in his mind and dismissed it at the joy evident in Lily's eyes. He could be such a miser sometimes.

'I do's' were exchanged and the fortunate couple kissed. Sirius whooped as the kiss intensified and everyone laughed. Remus's lips tightened, and Peter coughed again.

The chairs were cleared to the sides to make way for a square, and the couple began their first dance as Mr. and Mrs. James Potter, Fenwick switching to the piano. Lily danced in her bare feet, and James led her, occasionally stumbling and always smiling.

"I feel like I could cry, Moony," Sirius admitted. "Our kid's all grown up now."

"He is," Remus murmured.

"In no time they'll have a bunch of little Prongsies running around the place," Sirius continued. "It'll be terror, mate."

At some point Dumbledore summoned a refectory table from inside the house and set it down near the porch, flicking the remaining chairs around it with some unsurprisingly deft wandwork. There were several sharp cracks and food appeared (probably courtesy of the Hogwarts house elves, Remus mused).

The dinner was predictably astounding, and Sirius helped himself to no less than three servings, each of which was twice the size of an average meal. Remus was quiet for the most part, content to listen to the conversations of those around him – how Caradoc Dearborn nearly slept with a hag, how Fenwick's mother-in-law was playing bridge with so-and-so's father, how this or that wasn't going well or was going well or possibly could be going well but no one knew much about it to be perfectly honest.

Lily and James sat together at one head of the table, with Sirius on one side and Alice and Frank on the other. Remus sat next to Peter and across the table from Dorcas Meadowes, who attempted several times to engage him in conversation. He wasn't in a talking mood, however, and so he just smiled at her and offered one-word answers and affirmations that he had heard her. She tried not to show her disappointment, and he recognized numerous pointed glares coming from Alice's direction, but he ignored them.

When the time came, Sirius rose from his seat, cleared his throat, and clinked his glass with his fork.

"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. It is the time in the dinner where the best man says his bit." Someone down the table said something clever and there was some snickering, but they quieted in time for Sirius to respectfully continue. "Right. Like the rest of you, I hate hearing long, boring speeches on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately for the rest of you, I love giving long, boring speeches on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, and for that I am thoroughly sorry."

He turned to James and clapped his friend on the shoulder. "Ah, James. Jamie boy. Little Potter. We've had some great times together, old chum. I remember stepping foot on that train first year and knowing immediately that we would be fast friends, because you had snuck in your broom in your luggage, just like I had!" Dumbledore and Minerva laughed appreciatively, and James took on a sheepish smile. "And then we saw Remus with his nose in a book and Peter tripping over his own feet and we knew we would be friends with them because no one else would bother with them!"

Remus looked to Peter and rolled his eyes. Peter's face twisted into something that wasn't quite a smile.

"And then of course, Lily," Sirius said. The bride blushed. "We all knew you two would end up together, especially after her first words to you were, _'My, how did you fit such an obtusely large head inside the train?'_"

Hagrid turned a whooping laugh into a half-sobbing cough and blew his nose loudly, drowning out the rest of the laughter. It was hard to tell who was more embarrassed: James or Lily.

"I could say a lot here about our friendship and all that, but that's not what this is about, is it? This is about you and Lily doll here. I know you're young, I know you're stupid – well, not you Lily, but James, at least – but I never felt once that this wasn't right. Maybe it's because you're so obviously meant to be together. Maybe it's because you're the only ones who can stand each other. I don't know.

"Lily, I can honestly say I admire you more than any person I know, and the fact that you are now a mother only reinforces that." James took on a befuddled expression and turned to his wife for clarification, but she had no answers. Of the guests, only Dumbledore didn't appear shocked, and Alice began whispering to Lily quite urgently, gesturing below the table. Sirius, surveying his damage, grinned and pressed on, "I don't know how you do it, Lils. You've got work, friends, your husband, and four little brats running around the house, each one of us a different disaster waiting to happen. So, for all of us, I thank you, Lily – Mum – for putting up with us."

There was more laughter and James let out a huge sigh, which earned him a glare from Lily. Sirius, seeing this, added, "But don't think I'm going to call you Dad, James!" and Remus chuckled.

Sirius raised his glass in the air and, beaming, proclaimed, "To the Potters!"

The guests repeated his statement. After he was seated, Dumbledore rose from his seat at the opposite head of the table.

"Wise words, Sirius," Dumbledore chuckled. "I hope not to bore you for too long, but as one of the most senior people here – apologies, Bathilda – I feel I am entitled to a few words of advice, as we old men tend to believe we are.

"James, Lily –" he spread his arms wide like a great hug "– I can say it has been my immense pleasure to serve as both your mentor and your colleague, and I say without any doubt that you are two of the most uniquely talented and strong-willed individuals I have ever met. And even more so, I thank you for reminding us of our own strength. I let my life pass away without the kind of bond you two shared due to my own arrogance and my desire for solitude; while my life has been full of love, that failure shall always be my greatest regret. I must thank you, then, for reminding us that love is most necessary in the darkest of times, and that there is never a time too inconvenient to reaffirm our faith in the goodness of man. I wish you long and happy lives together, and if that does not prove enough, I wish you many more lives, equally joyous and prosperous. I have only four more words of wisdom to say, and they are this: nitwit, oddment, blubber, and tweak! Besides that, I only wish you the best."

He took his seat, and there was some light applause, although Sirius and James shared a look that clearly questioned the old headmaster's sanity. Dumbledore caught Remus's eye and smiled knowingly, and Remus chewed on his cheek to prevent his grin from becoming too conspicuous.

After the dinner the guests scattered across the yard and the table was cleaned off, food replaced with the default wedding cake. The happy couple cut into it, laughing as Sirius threw cherries at them from behind his human shield (Peter), and the festivities continued, although certain guests began to filter out as the evening wore on. To Remus's surprise, Dumbledore was not one of those guests, and he eventually found himself standing with the headmaster near the bird fountain.

"A most pleasant occasion, wouldn't you say?" Dumbledore regaled him. "I must confess that the roasted duck was absolutely splendid."

"Agreed," said Remus. Across the garden James dotted Lily's nose with whipped cream and Sirius let out a loud laugh. "They look… really happy, actually. I'm glad."

Dumbledore raised an eyebrow and quite nearly smirked. "Were you doubtful?"

"Of them? No," Remus replied honestly. "It's just that they're so young. I can't imagine entering into a marriage anytime in the near future. It's so much to honor so soon."

"I quite understand your concerns, but I rather think a marriage is much less ornery a commitment than an all-out war," Dumbledore pointed out. "They are a good match. They might end up murdering each other, as couples are wont to do, but if they avoid that then I see no serious problems in their marital future."

James smeared the whipped cream across Lily's cheek and had to avoid her attempted slap, and the guests were treated to the sight of the bride chasing the groom across the wedding site in her white dress.

"Assuming they don't actually kill each other," Remus added.

"Ah," said Dumbledore, comically stoic, "yes, that is the question."

Remus sipped his elfin wine and watched the chase, which ended in James scooping Lily up by her legs and parading her around the garden.

"It's unfortunate that Petunia did not see fit to grace us with her presence," Dumbledore sighed.

Remus sharply looked up. "They're not on good terms, are they?"

"Not by half. From what I understand, they used to be quite close, but Petunia was let down when Lily went to Hogwarts without her. I believe she wanted to follow her sister there herself, but that disappointment eventually transformed into spite and envy, and as such I believe they haven't spoken in many months."

"Lily doesn't say much about it."

"I would not expect her to. It's a difficult subject. I think she was hoping that her sister would at least make an appearance at her wedding."

"I can't say that I've had the misfortune of ever meeting Petunia," Remus stated with distaste at the name. Dumbledore frowned but said nothing of it. A thought struck Remus. "Is that common, though? That one child from a Muggle family will end up magical and the other one won't?"

"I cannot say for certain, but it has become more common," Dumbledore said, careful with his words. "When I was young – which was a very long time ago, admittedly – whole generations tended to be magical, not individual children. It has always been more common for Squibs to come randomly, not Muggle-born wizards. But there are less Muggle-borns at Hogwarts than there used to be, as well. In fact, I believe that until the 1800's most of Hogwarts was Muggle-born, which coincidentally coincided with the true rise of pureblood supremacy movements. But," he said, "I am an old man who is prone to rambling, so please don't feel obligated to listen to me prattle."

"Nonsense, I actually find the subject quite interesting," said Remus quite honestly, and a sense of utter déjà vu came over him. "It's something that interested me in school, to tell the truth… I remember, I always used to wonder why Hogwarts had so many empty classrooms. I even went to look at the enrollment counts to verify that the student population had significantly decreased."

"Yes, that is unfortunately the case," stated Dumbledore. He folded his hands across his belt and stared out into the garden. "Britain's wizarding population itself has decreased, for a myriad of unclear reasons. It is a puzzle, to say the least, and one that unfortunately has gone unanswered while great minds are concerned with other issues."

Remus followed the headmaster's gaze. "Yes. It's just something I found interesting. There will be time for it after the war, for Unspeakables and men such as yourself to ponder."

"There is always time for curiosity, my boy," said Dumbledore sagely, and he squeezed the young werewolf's shoulder. "Don't sell yourself short. If an issue intrigues you, then follow the scent. Don't depend on old, conservative men – and women – to blaze new paths. I could quote Robert Frost, one of my favorite poets, but that would seem hopelessly clichéd. Either way, I believe you get the point."

"Yes. Of course."

"Good, good," said Dumbledore, and he put his hand in his pocket. "Now, I must be leaving. The Wizengamot tends not to delay its proceedings, even for weddings, and even on a Sunday. Excuse me while I wish the happy couple a much happier future."

He left Remus standing near the fountain, and birds fluttered down where the old wizard once stood, taking roost on the edge of the stone basin and nipping at the water. Remus looked to Dumbledore treading across the garden, and then to his laughing friends near the veranda, and imagined Potter children running around the yard, flying on toy brooms and playing with garden gnomes. The question was: would the children themselves be magical? Or would the Potter family's magic contract like that of the rest of the wizarding world?

If humans' magic contracted, would that of animals lessen as well? Would half-breeds such as himself become extinct? Would a lessening of magic really be such a bad thing, if a child didn't have to go friendless because of a condition he couldn't control?

The Potters grinned at him over Dumbledore's shoulder and beckoned for him to come have a chat. Remus shook his head and cleared his mind of such depressing thoughts. He remembered that he had friends.

"I took the road less traveled by," he muttered, and he stepped toward the veranda.

-

Hermione sat in her office chewing on the end of a ballpoint pen. The pen itself was somewhat of a miracle inside the Ministry of Magic, as just about everyone else she knew used quills, but pens were efficient. She did use quills, from time to time, but ever since she'd taken this job she had decided to use pens, just like she had as a young girl. Quills were elegant, but they were ridiculous, really, particularly when the ease and convenience of a pen was taken into consideration.

Convenience. She hated that word. But maybe she was a hypocrite.

A memo flew into her room and landed on her desk, on top of whatever utterly important paper she had been ignoring. Holding the pen in her mouth, she flattened out the memo and read it:

_Meeting with MM and Education Minister in ten minutes. Would appreciate your presence._

_KS_

She folded the memo up and tossed it in the recycling bin (another yet-unseen innovation in the Ministry). Would it really bother Kingsley to write out full names every once in a while?

Someone knocked on her door and she called out in a weary voice, "Come in."

The door opened, but the visitor remained on the threshold.

"Granger, Diggory wanted to know if you had checked that report," said Daphne Greengrass.

"Yes, yes, I did," replied Hermione. "I slightly edited one section about expectations, as that could be a liability, but it was fine. I went ahead and filed it for him."

"Diggory will be pleased." Daphne's lips never moved much, and Hermione was quite aware that the girl still wasn't comfortable in her presence. That would change. Hopefully. "Thank you."

Hermione didn't have time to respond, as the former Slytherin had already left the office to report back to her superior. Shaking her head, she stood up, smoothed her skirt, and headed into the corridor, careful to lock the door behind her.

Her office was on the second floor, and the Minister's office was on the first, so she made for the lifts, as the stairs were never fun to traverse, especially considering the fact that some dolt had placed a Slickening Charm on them as a prank the Tuesday prior that the custodial staff still hadn't been able to remove. She was the only one using the lift at that moment, and the door was about to close on her when two men squeezed inside.

"I told Harry you skived off every Wednesday afternoon," crowed Ron as he settled in next to her. "That's a Galleon for me!"

"I'm not skiving off," Hermione retorted. "I'm going to a meeting with Kingsley. You know, the Minister of Magic. My boss."

"Yeah, Ron," Harry defended her. He grinned. "Besides, she skips work on Thursdays. Everyone knows that."

"Why are you two going up, at any rate?" she inquired.

"We actually are skiving off work, although that's only because Harry's got an extended lunch break," Ron explained. "Roger Davies got jabbed in the eye and it seemed pretty serious so they're giving the trainees a bit off so they can pay attention to him and reset some of the protective wards, which obviously were all for bunk the first go around, and of course when Harry Flooed me I thought two hours off from the store was a grand idea. And when we saw you going in a lift, we thought it would be nice to catch up with you rather than just Floo home!"

"If only I could have taken the stairs and avoided you," Hermione sighed, smirking.

"Oh, are they still not working? Excellent, George will be thrilled."

"Ron!"

"Actually, in this case you should be saying, 'George!'"

"It's been a lovely chat," said Harry, interrupting a surefire argument. He ushered Hermione out of the lift, as they had arrived at the first level. "We'll see you for dinner, then? Brilliant. Have a wonderful day!"

She glared at the two but behind the closing doors of the lift she saw Harry wink at her and distinctly heard Ron chuckle, and for some reason that dissipated her anger.

Those boys would be the end of her.

A security guard checked her person and did several simple security tests – mainly implemented to prevent Polyjuice imposters, just odd personal questions and that sort of business; it was sort of ridiculous, she privately thought – and led her into the conference room next to the Minister's office. Inside she found Kingsley waiting for her at his usual seat near the middle of the oval table, and across the table from him sat Minerva McGonagall and Education Minister Vilius Yarbet, a man of fifty with a rounded face, gray, bristled mustache, and curls of salt and pepper atop his head.

"Good afternoon, Ms. Granger," said Kingsley in his pleasant baritone. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything urgent."

"Not at all. I'm actually in a bit of a slow period at the moment." She took a seat to his right and faced McGonagall. "It's great to see you again, Professor."

"The same, Hermione," said her former professor, and she noticed the lack of her surname. "I was just talking to Kingsley here about how irritated we were that he stole you away before you could take your N.E.W.T.s. It's quite likely you would have set a record, you know."

"She already set a record for the youngest person to ever pass the bar exam," said Kingsley breezily, grinning (an odd sight for him, although she'd noticed in her time with the Minister that he surprisingly had a rather good sense of humor). "And that was with only several weeks of studying. She probably knew more about magical law in her sixth year at Hogwarts than half of the Ministry legal team at the time."

"You make it sound like I'm some sort of prodigy," said Hermione, embarrassed.

Kingsley and McGonagall shared a glance and she huffed to herself.

"Honestly! And enough about the bar exam. I _will_ be taking N.E.W.T.s next year, Professor McGonagall – the Minister himself promised me that when I signed on. Isn't that right, Minister?"

"I know how important tests are to you," he replied, half-seriously. He shrugged. "I figure the month I'll lose you is well worth the extra year I'll have you. The legal team needed some reinforcements, especially considering what's coming up in the next nine months. I'm just wondering if these N.E.W.T.s are before or after you retake the bar exam to try to get a higher grade."

McGonagall chuckled, oddly enough. Hermione rolled her eyes and turned to Yarbet. "Good afternoon, Mr. Yarbet. I hope they're not boring you with their taunting of me."

"Of course not," said the eternally implacable Yarbet, who was known around the Ministry for his relaxed demeanor and quick wit. "It's nice to see some bright young blood in this place. That's my job, after all."

"Even when she should be in school," said McGonagall, barbing Kingsley.

The Minister was not moved. "She was an incredibly valuable asset to the government that we couldn't let escape. She's one of our brightest minds at a time of extreme change, and at the same her presence on staff buys us a lot of political capital to help us make those changes. And things _are_ going to change, Minerva. I'm going to need your help in the coming months."

"Pray tell, Minister."

"To be blunt, we're starting over as a Ministry," he stated. "The old Ministry was inefficient and corrupt, mainly because it seemed to rule by default and there was no proper common sovereign. We're going to change that, with Granger's help."

"We're planning on writing a brand new charter of government," explained Hermione, feeling like she was in class again (and she knew all the answers), "a new constitution that radically changes the established order. First of all, we're going to start a new government based on republican democracy. We're going to simplify things and hold national elections every three years, with the optional referendum calling for election requiring a majority vote, and the coalition that wins will form a ministry. Some appointments will last longer than the term limits to provide stability, and so on, and in addition we're going to be recreating the legal system to empower it and provide a stronger, fairer sense of justice. We've been studying some of the prominent wizard governments and also those of the Muggles – Britain, Switzerland, and especially the United States. It's quite fascinating, really."

"You're right," said McGonagall with dry humor. "That does sound like quite a bit of change."

"And that's why Granger's so doubly valuable," Kingsley said. "It's going to be easier to sell it to the public when we paint Hermione Granger, war hero, as the architect of this new constitution. And we're not really 'painting' her, either, as she's probably going to end up being our James Madison, so to speak. Sorry," he added, seeing McGonagall's confused expression, "Muggle reference. Their governments are fascinating, and ingenious in the simplest ways."

"But it will be a difficult effort," continued Yarbet, "and that effort is one of the reasons we are here today, is it not?"

"Yes, indeed, and we'll get to that in a second." Kingsley leaned forward and placed one hand on the table, staring at McGonagall. "In the coming months I'm going to need to gather the Order, Headmistress, to get their help in selling this new government to a skeptical public – and, to be honest, not only sell it, but help us shape it. We're going all out. I'm already putting out feelers to see how the Continent will react to our changes, and I'm planning on a full media blitz to help get this across and signed. For example, we want to establish media independence and cut off the _Prophet's_ ties to the Ministry, but to gain support for that we're going to have to use all of our influence at the _Prophet_. The irony hasn't escaped me, as you can probably tell."

The headmistress contemplated the Minister's words as she took a long sip of her tea. Hermione noticed that McGonagall had definitely aged over the course of the war, and she had to stop herself from questioning how many years the woman had left in her in such a capacity. Dumbledore had handled it well enough and he'd been older than his deputy, after all.

"Very good ideas, Minister," she finally agreed. "I certainly hope you know what you are doing, because I don't think we shall have another opportunity like this for some time."

"Trust me, Minerva. I've got my bases covered. If this doesn't work, it's going to be because our society isn't built for this type of power structure. We're going to have the support of numerous influential groups and Harry Potter himself will be the first person to cast a ballot come next year if I have anything to say about it."

"Hopefully voting for Kingsley," added Yarbet, smirking.

"Yes," said a straight-faced Kingsley, "that is the hope, personally speaking. But, while we have some of Ms. Granger's precious time, let's get to business. Vilius, the floor is yours."

"Ah, thank you, Minister. Ladies and gentleman, the reason we are here is simple: education. Along with the other changes the Minister has alluded to, in the next year the educational organization of magical Britain is going to get a huge system-shock." McGonagall shifted uneasily in her seat, but Yarbet pushed onward. "One of the things Ms. Granger and her colleagues will be working on is a new set of requirements for the education of children by our government. While our current laws only require for five years of schooling and maintaining passing grades at an approved magical institution or passing standardized home-school achievement tests, we're aiming to change that. We hope to require schooling of children from ages seven to sixteen, starting in the next couple of years, as soon as we can get our infrastructure built up to that point."

"Are you suggesting that we expand Hogwarts?" asked McGonagall in a sharp voice that clearly indicated her displeasure with the very notion.

"Not at all, Headmistress," replied an unperturbed Yarbet. "Hogwarts shall remain as it has always been. From ages seven to eleven we primarily want students to be taught in the traditional Muggle sciences – langage arts, math, biology, and the like. The honest truth is that the Muggle world has outpaced us to the degree where it's going to be hard to catch up if we don't start now. Our students are pitifully ignorant because of our own failures, as I'm sure you recognize."

"Yes, I do. Some of our students' grammar is atrocious. Our entry-level tests for non-Muggle-borns are far too easy."

"That will change," Yarbet assured her. "We will either require students to attend a Muggle primary school or a Ministry-approved magical primary school, and in addition we're looking to start informing Muggleborn students of their natural talents at a younger age to make their transition a smoother process. We will, of course, allow home-schooled children, but the entry-level tests for such children will be far more comprehensive, whether they're entering Hogwarts or another magical school."

He took a breath, as he had rattled off the last sentence in just a moment's time. "Which leads me to our next policy. While the country is littered with small community schools teaching magic, we wish to consolidate those other schools. Hogwarts shall remain as it has always been, but the small-scale schools will be reorganized, as we don't think there are enough students at each school to allow for the kind of staff specialization that is needed for proper magical education, so we are going to consolidate those schools into several learning centers across the country that will be boarding schools, like Hogwarts. For the most part, these centers will be specialized: they will be either vocational, or perhaps magnet schools for students interested in both magic and science, and so on."

"While Hogwarts provides a broader magical education," stated McGonagall, nodding. "I will confess that your ideas certainly make sense up to this point."

"Thank you, but now we must shift our attention to Hogwarts." Yarbet flattened his hair and Kingsley watched on, leaning back in his chair and his hands folded in his lap. "We entertained the notion of opening a competing school to Hogwarts in southern England –" McGonagall's mouth opened to protest "– but quickly dismissed the idea, seeing as Hogwarts could easily house four times its current student body. We do, however, wish to put forth the possibility of expanding staffing at Hogwarts, as the current format only allows one professor per subject area, and does not let teachers spend enough time with their most advanced – and most unlearned – students. We would suggest perhaps allotting multiple professors per subject, or, more realistically, allotting senior and junior professors, which would allow you to expand class time and provide more instruction to all students, and create a lighter workload when it comes to grading papers," he commented with a hint of a smile. "The problem, of course, is that it's rather hard for the Ministry to implement a change at Hogwarts."

"I'll take it from here," Hermione offered, glad to finally be able to speak. Yarbet appeared to be amused at her enthusiasm and gestured for her to continue. "The reason, as you well know, Headmistress, is that Ministry changes cannot be implemented at Hogwarts without the headmaster's consent, or the full consent of the board of governors – case in point being Dumbledore, I believe, who only accepted Umbridge because he knew the board would vote her in anyway."

"That was because the Ministry appoints the board," McGonagall noted. "So really the Ministry does control Hogwarts to a great degree."

"Yes, but we're offering Hogwarts greater control of their own matters," Yarbet butted in. "We're planning on changing the process – with your consent, of course, although I think you will agree. We want to make the positions on the board lifetime appointments, and we offer to change the laws so that the headmaster must approve the appointment, or the appointment must have three-quarters approval from the rest of the board. It would allow us to set up Hogwarts as an independent agency that is still tied to the Ministry."

"I shall have to think about the offer," said McGonagall very slowly, but Hermione could tell that the headmistress was pleased with the deal. Her hesitance, though, was in line with her typical conservatism. "But I would say that Hogwarts would be amenable to that suggestion, at least. The professorial changes, however, are something that I think we would need to discuss with both our staff and our governors."

"Understandably," agreed Yarbet. "As I understand it, Ms. Granger will be our liaison between Hogwarts and the Ministry, considering the fact that she has ties to the school still and also is well-versed in our ever-changing legal system."

"She'll report directly to Vilius and me," said Kingsley. "If you're not against the changes, we want to begin adding to the Hogwarts staff this year and testing out our new policies. The school reorganizations are something that we hope to finish over the next two years, assuming we actually are in power that long."

McGonagall gestured toward a picture on Kingsley's desk of him posing with Harry and said with a prim smirk, "I think you will be. You're well-connected, at the very least."

"I sincerely hope my ministry isn't only known for having good connections, but yes, they don't hurt."

"Back to the discussion, though," pressed McGonagall, tearing her eyes away from the photo. "I will say, as a preliminary matter, that I'm really not sure if the school needs any extra professors at the current time. Three years ago this would have been a brilliant idea, but our enrollment numbers have dwindled to the point of insignificance."

"We've just had a war," said Yarbet dismissively, "of course enrollment is down. It'll be back up soon enough."

"It's not just that we've lost people due to the war. Our first-year counts for the next three years are miniscule. They pick back up to relatively normal levels after that, but there's still been a marked decline over the last decade, and if you go back to when I was in school, there's been an even more pronounced dropoff in enrollment."

It was at this point that something began turning over and over again in Hermione's mind, and after a few furious seconds wrestling with her memory, she remembered Remus Lupin's work. She'd only gotten midway through the first chapter, but she couldn't help but think of his comments on the magical population of Britain. Of how he purported that less and less magical children were being born, and that this had long-term consequences for magical society.

_We are an aging society in the most unnatural way,_ he had written. _The changes in our population are not due to wars or disease or food shortages. There has been a decline in the fertility rate for witches, particularly as knowledge of contraception charms has become more advanced over the last two centuries, but even that fails to explain the huge decline in Muggle-born numbers, a decline disproportionate to the decline of the fertility rate in Muggle Britain._

"I'm sure that it is an aberration," Yarbet replied. "Even our best Unspeakables haven't mentioned anything to that effect, or at least haven't said anything that would be cause for concern."

"Perhaps," drawled McGonagall sardonically, "that is because they do not speak."

"I have not been briefed to that effect as of yet," said Kingsley as if he had not heard her comment (Kingsley was immensely talented at pretending he hadn't heard sarcastic quips or insults), "but your concern will be duly noted, Minerva, and if your worries persist, Vilius and I will be most pleased to meet with you again to discuss the issue."

McGonagall raised her eyebrows but eventually nodded to show her agreement.

"If that's all for today, I think I am going to call an end to our meeting." Kingsley stood from his desk and offered McGonagall a helping hand, but she refused and quite ably made it to her feet by herself. "The Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sport needs to meet with me, and he suggested that we mix business and pleasure and meet at a Wimbourne Wasps exhibition. Of course, since he insisted, I relented and agreed."

"That sounds like such a sacrifice," agreed Yarbet. "Don't suppose I could start having meetings at Hogwarts Quidditch games now, could I?"

"Assuming we have Quidditch this year," added McGonagall.

"Yes, yes, but I'm sure that there will be time for a little fun in between studying, right, Minerva?"

McGonagall and Yarbet quarreled in a friendly manner on their way out of the conference room. Nodding to Kingsley, Hermione followed them outside and headed for the lifts, leaving the Minister in another empty room.


	3. War

"War."

-

_Some assert that war is a natural process, humanity's natural population control. Some assert that it is necessary for the sake of progress – that war shakes us out of our old ways when we have grown complacent, and that it allows for the young and new to replace the old and invaluable._

_These scholars of balance assert that the costs of war are offset by these gains – that the deaths undertaken are a necessary price to pay for mankind's resilience to change and reform in the name of tradition._

_What they fail to realize, however, is the unspoken cost of war. Not the effect on society or culture or the mindset of a generation, although that effect is strong and should be respected and well-documented. Not the effect of war on ourselves, but the effect of war on our environment, and only through our environment the effect of war on our society._

_Fertility typically declines during periods of war. This is a fact both naturally assumed and scientifically and statistically proven. It is also common knowledge that after wars there is a boom in fertility, best exemplified by the recent boom after the second World War and the corresponding Terror of Grindelwald, and again, this seems natural, the law of averages working its magic (pardon the expression). _

_What we have failed to realize, though, is that war has a subtler effect on fertility that several have noticed but none have investigated. Dating back to the second Goblin War in Wales during the 1200's – the first magical war that we have correspondingly accurate population data for, with revisions and commentary by Chaucer – each magical war in Britain (and in Europe, although data for the Continent is less specific; data for Asia is completely unreliable until the middle of the 20__th__ century; and data for the America is relatively unhelpful and statistically insignificant since only three or four extended wars of any magical consequence have occurred there since the first millennium) was accompanied by a startling drop in Muggle-born fertility._

_This drop in Muggle-born fertility is a puzzle. While there are drops in Muggle fertility and magical fertility during these wars, for the large part these drops are equal. The drop in Muggle-born fertility means something else – that less and less of the Muggles born during times of war are born with inherent magic._

_There is no short explanation for this phenomenon, but it suggests there is a relationship between environmental magic and magical fertility – that magic is not only inherited, and that it is not coincidence that allows magical progeny to be born from non-magical parents._

_I would raise these questions in the presence of those "scholars" of balance if only I had the means or the opportunity, but I don't. I would ask them if these boons of war were worth the hidden costs, worth the broken connection between our two worlds. _

_I would ask them to name the benefits of our most recent war, and I think they would be hard-pressed to name any. Unlike the second World War and the Terror, there has been no economic and diplomatic revolution; there has been no integration that ensured greater peace and prosperity (something that the Muggles, whom we constantly disparage, largely achieved, despite the tensions of the Cold War). There has not been a change in society. The oppressed are still oppressed, and the oppressors are still in power, a fact to which I can personally attest._

_This does not seem like any other war these scholars have described. Perhaps they are right, and true war does have its values, that true war does bring about change. But there has been no change or benefit – only fear. Let's assume they are correct. Let's assume that the lack of improvement means that a war did not end. In that case, it merely means that the war has not resolved itself. It means that we have, for the past decade and change, been living in Chamberlain's delusion, and that the worst is yet to come._

-

Remus picked the toddler up underneath his arms and spun him around in the air, Harry making little, "Whoa!" noises and giggling every few turns.

"Mooey!" he squealed as Remus tossed him up and caught him safely. "Mooey!"

"Moony's my name," said Remus happily, hoisting Harry against his waist and finding a seat near the fire. He sat Harry on his lap and kissed his forehead. "You're awfully intelligent, you know that, Harry?"

Harry, for his part, became suddenly interested in the rabbit ears that his father had transfigured onto his head in the spirit of the holiday. Remus affectionately rubbed the toddler's black thatch of hair and rocked him on his knee.

"Stop it, Remus, I think my son likes you more than he likes me." Lily smiled at him as she walked into the room, her face lightly colored green and hair dyed black with a pointy hat on her head. Remus privately thought she didn't look nearly wicked enough for the costume, but that wasn't such a bad thing. "You spoil him."

"With attention? As if you don't," he countered, and when Lily drew near, Harry extended his arms, mumbling something that distinctly sounded like, "Mummy."

"One second, sweet, Mummy needs to clean up the living room," she replied, and kissed Harry's head on the same spot Remus had. "Sit with Uncle Remus for a while longer, okay?"

Harry groaned but seemed to understand. His disappointment quickly vanished, however, when his focus traveled to the large black nose Remus was wearing on his face, and he found, to his immense delight, that the nose made funny squeaky noises whenever he squeezed it. This amused him for some time, and his ministrations made Remus glad that he'd chosen to dress as his monthly alter ego. Harry, for one, didn't seem to mind.

Lily set to cleaning the area, a domesticated Witch of the West, and Remus couldn't help but noticing that most of what she was cleaning belonged to James, and less frequently, Harry. Her items had already been placed neatly in their rightful place before she'd entered the room.

He rocked Harry on his knee again and played with the boy's rabbit ears, flopping them back and forth and to the side, which Harry took as fair play and then reached for Remus's own furry ears.

"The wolf and the rabbit," floated James's voice from the kitchen. "Just don't go eating my bunny, eh, wolfy?"

The joke fell flat in the tense atmosphere of the room. Lily continued cleaning, ignoring her husband's remark, and Harry continued to reach for Remus's pinned-on wolf ears. James, who for his part had dressed up as Dumbledore, entered the room, looking more haggard and worn-down than the century-old professor.

"The others couldn't make it?" Remus asked, pushing past the blunt comment.

"Peter's doing reconnaissance," James responded without energy. "Sirius said he'd be by later, but couldn't make it at the moment. Didn't bother asking why, but he's had a lot on his plate recently."

A minute passed in silence before Remus stood, Harry in his hands, and offered him to his father. James took the toddler, who rested his head on the elder Potter's shoulder and began humming.

"I brought some groceries," Remus said. "I gave them to Lily. I thought it'd make it easier on you, without having to worry about going out and getting anything."

"No, wouldn't want to go out and miss anything," said James quietly, and Remus noticed the change in phrasing but didn't ask why. "Thanks."

"It was the least I could do."

Lily put her wand away and faced the two of them. "Well. I think the entire house is properly clean, wouldn't you say? When Sirius and Peter make it by, anyway, it should be passable."

"It looks wonderful, Lily," said Remus. "I brought some candy for you all, actually. To celebrate the occasion."

He reached into his jacket and grabbed a large paper sack from Honeydukes. He'd spent an hour or so rifling through the contents of the store, looking for something that both young Harry could enjoy and that James and Lily would like. Mostly he bought chocolate, as it was both delicious and highly convenient at a time when dementors were breeding like (he looked away from Harry) rabbits.

Lily took the sack and held it against her chest, rocking back on her heels and beaming. "Thanks, Remus. That's very thoughtful of you."

"Yes, Moony," agreed James. "Thanks."

"If you think that's a lot you should see what I bought myself. I've always had that sweet tooth, you know."

Like James's had, this joke fell flat, too, although it hadn't been killed by subtext, just an unwilling atmosphere. James took Harry back into the kitchen, set him on the counter, and opened up the ice box. Lily went to set the chocolate in the pantry. Harry chewed on a candlestick.

"Stop that, Harry," James chided gently, pulling the candlestick from his son's mouth. He tossed a bottle to Remus, who had passed into the doorway between the two rooms. "Goblin ale."

"Thanks."

"Of course."

Lily reorganized the pantry and the two men drank cold beer while Harry stared at the sunroof over the butcher block island.

"I should go," Remus said after his second bottle and several discouraging attempts at stilted conversation. "Alice and Frank asked me to stop by."

This made James flinch for some reason, but Remus couldn't tell why. It was as if James thought he favored the Longbottoms over them. Which was ridiculous, but he couldn't blame James for being paranoid.

"Okay. Thanks for stopping by."

"Bye, Remus," said Lily.

On a whim, he grabbed James's shoulder and stared into his eyes for a second before nodding and turning to Harry, who he kissed on the forehead again. He gave Lily a tight hug, pressing another kiss against her hair, and disentangled himself from her and made his way through the house to the front door.

It was bitterly cold outside, and he wrapped his cloak around him to block the wind. At the front gate he met Sirius, who was wearing a deerstalker and had a pipe between his lips.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Holmes."

Sirius didn't smile. "Good afternoon, Big Bad Wolf. Leaving so soon?"

"Yes," said Remus, chuckling, "I don't think James and Lily wanted a wolf at the dinner table."

Sirius pulled his cap lower down on his head and shrugged.

"No, I'm going to check on Frank and Alice," Remus elaborated, although his friend hadn't asked for an explanation. "I'll see you later, though?"

"I suppose so," said Sirius, and Remus allowed him to pass without comment.

The wolf stared at the would-be detective for a long while as Sirius ascended the front stairs. From his vantage point near the largest tree in the front yard, another Remus struggled to keep his emotions in check as he watched the scene in front of him. He tried to convince himself not to go after the detective, not to kill the cold-hearted bastard, not to save his two best friends from a horrific betrayal. But he couldn't do anything. It was just a memory.

A memory that was, he thought somewhat bittersweetly, ending. He felt himself pulled out of the past world and back into the familiar confines of the headmaster's office, the surface of the Pensieve rippling below him before finally coming to a standstill.

"Just wanted to see it one last time," Remus explained. Dumbledore, behind his desk, nodded. "Funny. That memory's been haunting me for two weeks but I still don't want to say goodbye."

"You're not saying goodbye," said Dumbledore. "You're merely ending a fortnight of nightmares and restless sleep. You will always have your memories of your friends. A Pensieve merely gives your subconscious space to breathe, and your mind refuge from its own troubled self."

"I think I'm going to need more than a Pensieve for that," Remus muttered, hugging himself closely, his fingertips nearly reaching the opposite shoulder blades on each side..

Dumbledore folded his hands across his desk and said nothing. Remus stepped back from the Pensieve and stared resolutely at the stone floor, tracing the little tics and dents from past headmasters and past irreverent students. Dumbledore's desk was as grand as ever, and the silver instruments on it endlessly whirred. He noticed one in particular, a new addition to the desk: a metallic clock with a plasma-like floating interior that glowed green and read across in yellow letters, _"VIVIT."_

"That one's new."

Dumbledore smiled sadly and looked at the clock. "Unfortunately, it is."

Remus picked at his teeth and watched Fawkes stare into nothingness, but quickly grew tired of the latter affair and instead focused his gaze on the bookshelf on the near wall.

"I've been meaning to ask you if I could use the Hogwarts library for a while. Crouch has revoked my basic privileges while an investigation is pending into my association with Sir– Black's actions." He bit his tongue as he said this and his eyes began to sting. "That includes, funnily enough, my library card. I've become fantastically bored, as you could probably guess. I've always needed my books. I don't have much else at the moment."

"You are always welcome at Hogwarts, Remus. It would be my pleasure to have you perusing our most underutilized school library."

"Thank you," Remus whispered.

Dumbledore did not ask what he was thanking him for, and for that Remus was inordinately grateful.

The halls were cluttered during the passing period, but no one paid the raggedy twenty-one-going-on-forty-year-old werewolf any mind, although one girl, a fifth or sixth year, did attempt to make eyes at him. Almost no one was inside the library, and Remus rested against the shelf nearest the entryway as ghosts played out before him.

He saw Lily, arguing good-naturedly with him over a homework assignment for Slughorn. He had taken the opportunity to grill her, per James's orders, on her friendship with Severus Snape. She'd seen through the ruse immediately, and had teasingly responded, "Why are you so interested about the men in my life, Remus? Do you want me for yourself?"

He thought about saying yes, incontrovertibly yes, he did, that he had pretty much been in love with her since the Charms exam third year and of course couldn't do anything about it due to James's crush – but he didn't. Instead he rolled his eyes at the _absurdity_ of her assumption and made a joke about brain-clogging fumes from old parchment. It had sounded better at the time.

That had been fifth year, September of 1976.

He'd gotten over Lily by the end of sixth year, conveniently in time for James to swoop in and woo her. It occurred to Remus that he'd never again fallen for someone like he had for her, but there was time for that. He had time enough, yet no world to speak of.

He saw Peter, during one of their homework sessions, which really was a codeword for tutoring session, since Peter needed help in History of Magic and Defense Against the Dark Arts and Remus was more than willing to provide said help. He didn't think he'd ever forget the earnestness in Peter's eyes as he sincerely tried to understand what Remus whispered to him in hushed tones so pretty, older Alice sitting one table over wouldn't hear how _stupid_ Peter Pettigrew was (_Peter, you're not stupid, don't say that…_).

Peter was always so private. There were times when Remus would catch Peter at a quiet moment, murmuring to himself and attempting to study, but the round-faced boy had given up and stuck a copy of _Treasure Island_ in his textbook. The times when Peter would suddenly leave a dinner when Sirius began talking about his latest girlfriend, arms clutched across his chest, too awkward to face a mature conversation.

He saw James and Sirius and heard a conversation about empty classrooms, and he shuddered. The shaggy-haired ghost grinned at him, leered at him, laughed at him.

"Why, Sirius?" he growled, covering his mouth with his hand. He stuck his tongue out and licked his palm, and found it was sweaty.

He was shaking. He pushed away from the wall and tried to find a familiar shelf, although his memory seemed only to come to the fore when it wanted to haunt him, and he felt confused by the myriad of shelves and books. At the middle grouping of tables sat a lone girl, the same age as the one who had attempted to flirt with him. He noticed that a scar ran down her left cheek, similar to his own.

She looked up from her book and noticed him.

"Hello," he said, to pre-empt her.

"You're not a student," she said.

"No, I'm not."

"Then why are you here?"

He didn't know precisely what to say, so he didn't answer directly and instead said, "My name is Remus Lupin. What's your name?"

"Margaret Meadowes," and with that Remus immediately saw the resemblance. He saw Dorcas in her eyes, in her face – in how her hair flipped up at the end, how her nose was more like a button than a proper breathing device.

She was, by his internal calculation, around ten years younger than her sister, who had been famous at Hogwarts by the time Remus arrived as a first-year, but she held the same reserved beauty. She was no Lily or Andromeda, but she, like Dorcas, was alluring in the most innocent way.

"Nice to meet you, Margaret," he said. "I graduated four years ago."

She didn't ask the obvious question, and he was relieved. He didn't want to have to think about Dorcas again after an afternoon spent with his best friends' ghosts.

Apparently her studies were more interesting than anything he had to offer. He noticed that the library was not growing any fuller, and wondered if the packed hallways had been a red herring.

The country was undergoing a population decrease, he knew, but there would soon be a relative boom due to the end of the war and the return to stability. Soon the halls would be full again.

Something about the thought gave him pause.

He remembered Dumbledore's words about Muggle-borns, and how the increase in prejudice – the reason for this damned war – had only occurred with a decrease in Muggle-born fertility rates.

What, he thought to himself, were those rates during a time of war? A time of violent, radically increased magical activity?

"_I never knew there were so many empty classrooms."_

It was stupid, but thinking about something stupid helped him quit thinking about something real, and he found himself at the enrollment books again, although this time he wasn't a sixth-year fool of a Gryffindor, he was an out-of-luck beaten-down fool of a man, and these random bursts of energy and excitement were all he had left. Nothing about the world as it was made sense to him, and so in these bizarre moments when the most random facts clicked in his mind and he realized answers he presumed no one had ever wanted to know, it completed him on a necessarily human level.

War of the Roses. Sustained drop in Muggle-born fertility rate for thirty years, only recovering with the end of the war. Of course, it made sense for there to be a decrease in the raw amount of Muggle-borns, as more and more Muggles were being killed (and wizards, as well), but a decrease in the actual rate? That indicated something else.

Goblin wars. Sustained drops.

Axel's Rebellion. A moderate drop, but still noticeable.

World War II and the Terror of Grindelwald. The most catastrophic drop in Muggle-born fertility rate as of yet. The magical fertility rate, he noticed in every case, was somewhat affected, but not nearly as drastically as the rate for Muggle-borns.

Like that it began to fall into place. There would be a time for further investigation, but to start with, he knew one thing: that magical wars led to less magical births from the Muggle population. Why was that? The violent nature of the magic being used? The overuse of magic? The suppression of Muggle-borns?

He grabbed the huge book, hoisted it onto his hip, and cast a wandless Lightening Charm on it as he went to the History of Magic section to find some books he would need if he wanted to properly run this through, for the first time in two weeks knowing what he was looking for and almost enjoying it.

Margaret Meadowes sat at her table and, much like her late sister, didn't say a word to Remus.

-

"Left, Harry!"

The thinnest figure in the air swerved downward sharply and a black ball just missed taking its target, immediately curving back to redouble its efforts. It stopped, however, when it noticed another figure, back turned to the ball, and changed courses for this new unaware prey.

"Pass the Quaffle here!" shouted Ginny, her broom still turned away from the swooping menace and her focus on Seamus Finnegan on the other end of the pitch. "C'mon, Seamus!"

"Ginny –" Seamus started to say, but the ball was almost at her now when –

"Gotcha, blighter!" exclaimed George as he dove in and sent the Bludger reeling with a thorough strike from his paddle. "Pass her the blasted ball, Seamus."

Hermione, from her position in the grand stands, watched all of this with an unwillingly keen eye. She watched the thin bespectacled boy, grinning as he searched for the elusive Snitch, and winced every time one of those cursed Bludgers drew near him. She feared as Chasers shot toward the red-headed Keeper, only to relax when he'd successfully blocked their shot and avoided their nosedives.

"Weasley with the Quaffle now, folks," boomed Lee Jordan's eternally good-humored voice from nonexistent speakers. "She's streaking down the pitch – passes it to Pucey, who passes it to Seamus – Seamus mishandles it, good job on that, chum – back to Pucey, he spins above retreating Chaser Bradley, makes a nice dip move, Wood is coming up strong – AND PUCEY GETS IT BY WOOD! Well, he may be a slimy Slytherin, but he still got it past the professional Keeper. Good job, Pucey." There was a cough and Jordan's voice whined, "Ow! I complimented him, Professor, what else do you want me to do?"

Arthur Weasley chortled but was silenced by a glare from his wife.

"This is supposed to encourage unity, Arthur," Mrs. Weasley chided him.

Arthur nodded but Hermione could tell he privately agreed with Lee Jordan's sentiment.

"And that makes the score 40-10 in your first annual Student-Alumni Quidditch Game," Jordan continued. "Great matchup we have today with students and former players on each side, ladies and gentlemen, and we're glad to see such a turnout. Remember, all proceeds from ticket sales and concessions go to St. Mungo's and Hogwarts endowment funds, and Merlin do we need that money. What, Professor, it's the truth! Anyway, a matchup for the ages, with Gryffindor's star players all over the field – Ron Weasley versus his predecessor Oliver Wood, and two true Quidditch legends going mano a mano, with Seeker Charlie Weasley sorting it up for Wood's side and Harry Potter going opposite him. There will be plenty of substitutions throughout the game, but you'll notice that several players never even played at Hogwarts – Seamus, don't fall off your broom – and that's because this is in the spirit of fun and Seamus threatened to kill me if he didn't get an opportunity to play."

There was a pause as Professor McGonagall made another threat against Jordan, this one much more palpable and likely to come true.

"Er, sorry, Seamus, didn't mean to say that out loud. Right, Cho Chang, former Seeker for Ravenclaw, has the Quaffle now, and she's already scored twice today on Ron Weasley. Incidentally, that's twice more than Ron has ever scored in his life, if you know what I mean. I – OW! Um, let's just take this opportunity to remind everyone, especially myself, that this is a family event and we'd like to keep it that way. But back to the action, Chang passes to pretty boy Draco Malfoy, whose hair is looking especially sleek today, and her fellow former Seeker brings the Quaffle up the pitch."

"Good afternoon, Hermione." The serene voice was instantly recognizable, and Hermione smiled as Luna Lovegood sat down next to her. "I don't think they're playing very well today. Ronald seems like it's been a while since he's used a broom. Lee Jordan makes me laugh, though."

"He's very… amusing," Hermione agreed, grinning as she heard McGonagall castigate Jordan for yet another slip-up.

"Are we leaving soon for the hospital?" Luna asked. "I believe the event starts in the next twenty minutes."

Hermione checked her watch and frowned. "You're right. That's a shame, we'll miss the game. Unless, of course, it's one of those dragged-on affairs, but I doubt that'll happen with a charity game. Ron won't be pleased."

"Harry won't either. He likes it so when you cheer him on."

"Uh, yes, him too," Hermione said, not quite sure what Luna was talking about. "Right. We should be going."

"Leaving so soon?" inquired a disappointed Mrs. Weasley. "The boys were so excited to show off their old skills."

"They rather wanted to impress Ron's girlfriend," said Mr. Weasley, grinning.

"Yes, because I didn't watch them for six years," Hermione retorted. "I am sorry, though, but this can't wait. I'll be by afterward, though. Dinner at the Burrow?"

"Yes, yes, of course, dear. Here, come give me a kiss before you go. You'd better show tonight!"

St. Mungo's had been relatively unaffected by the war, unless the increased number of patients was counted. It was sad, Hermione thought, when the effects of any event were judged by the catastrophic damage, or lack thereof, done to a building or site.

By now the initial patient swell had begun to ease away, as the worst of the damage had been done, but the worst of that damage was bad indeed. The receptionist recognized them immediately and directed the two of them to a private ward on the fourth floor. Media waited for them outside, but a security wizard ushered them through, and Hermione ignored the flash of cameras. It had been three months and her celebrity still hadn't entirely worn off, partially because she still had such a public role as legal counsel to the Minister, and the fact that she was the Boy Who Lived's best friend.

"Glad you're here," said a man with a tuft of white beard and hair that pointed upward on either side, reminding Hermione of a grayed version of a character she'd seen in _X-Men_ cartoon commercials on holiday break. "Helbert Spleen, Professor at St. Mungo's teaching hospital in conjunction with the International Magic-Based Medicine Education Fund."

"I've read your work," Hermione replied, somewhat wary of someone who worked for the _Prophet_, although his articles had usually limited themselves to medical advice (sound, from what she knew) and not political hardball. "I see we're not alone."

"No, we've got some of the best and brightest here to help show these patients that someone cares for them." Spleen stepped back to point out noteworthy individuals to the pair. "Horace Slughorn, of course, you know him… Gwenog Jones of the Holyhead Harpies… ooh, Celestina Warbeck and Glenda Chittock; Celestina performed the Puddlemere United anthem here a few years ago for charity… Jascelind Wadcock, and she rarely leaves the house as I hear it… Rufus Fudge, a lovely young chap, much less of a pig than his uncle…ah, Newt Scamander and his grandson Rolf. Handsome fellow, don't you think?"

"His nose is somewhat off-center, but besides that he's quite a sight," said Luna. "I think I like him."

Spleen stared at her for several long moments before breaking into a grin and chuckling. "Yes, I think you will. Rolf is… quite eccentric. An enthusiastic lad, but charming. Anyway, if you could just make your rounds, say a few words to everyone… we understand your friends are busy at the moment, but if they could ever stop by, it would do wonders for morale."

"Yes," said Hermione, immediately recognizing who he was referring to, "I think they'd be amenable to that."

"Good, good."

Some of the faces weren't familiar to her, but a disturbing number were. Vicky Frobisher, a bright, determined girl whom Hermione had always liked, had suffered a curse that caused her to bleed out of her ears and nose at random intervals, and only a complex cocktail of potions allowed her to remain alive. Cormac McLaggen had a severe brain tumor caused by a curse from Rodolphus Lestrange, although it seemed to have only heightened his arrogance, as one of the Healers regretfully explained, and it was uncertain whether the tumor was benign or not, although he would sometimes sweat green liquid (his uncle, who Hermione recognized as being Tiberius Ogden, was not impressed). Fergus Finnigan, Seamus's unyieldingly bright cousin, was not nearly as annoying as Seamus had made him out to be, possibly because his mouth had been cursed off.

"That's a bad one," acknowledged Spleen. Hermione covered her mouth with her hand and felt like she was going to vomit. He gently led them over to another corner, where Gwenog Jones was in deep conversation with a man lying upright in his bed with a book at his side. "This, however, is perhaps our most disturbing case."

Gwenog Jones looked up, smiled, and turned to the man, saying in a low voice, "I'll be back over in a bit. I'll check with the staff."

"Thanks, Gwen," muttered the man, whose eyes seemed sunken into his face.

Gwenog left, and Spleen stepped forward to introduce his charges.

"Good afternoon, Errolan. This is Hermione Granger and Luna Lovegood," he said, and he pointed to the two of them. Hermione bowed her head in regard and Luna stared ahead as always.

"I've heard of the two of them," Errolan replied, clearly uninterested. "Harry Potter's girlfriend and the Quibbler writer's daughter, and another one of Potter's friends. Yes, they're quite famous now."

"She's not his girlfriend," Luna stated in a clear voice. "Although maybe she'd like to be. But that would cause a very nasty love triangle and those never end up well."

Spleen beamed at her and clapped Hermione on the back. "Sounds wonderful. I'll leave you to it!"

He wandered off, and Hermione looked back to Errolan. For his part, he stared at the ceiling.

"You're Gwenog Jones's brother, right?" Hermione finally asked. Errolan looked down. "The resemblance is clear."

"Yes, I am. Her less famous and fortunate brother, but that's not her fault, is it?"

"My mum always said it was a waste of time to throw pity parties," Luna replied. "There's no one to share the tea with."

She tugged on her hair and began to have a staring contest with the man, although Hermione wasn't sure if he was willingly participating or if Luna was just being odd.

"Fair point," Errolan Jones finally conceded, when Hermione had been quite certain he would scream at them and tell them to leave. His fingers went to a gold necklace around his neck, although the end of the necklace was hidden inside his undershirt. "I'm relatively healthy, and I've still got a mouth and twenty-two beautiful white teeth, courtesy of my father's side of the family. All in all not too bad of a haul."

"If you don't mind me asking, what is wrong –" Hermione had a sudden vision of a deranged Gilderoy Lockhart, devoid of memory "– why are you here?"

"I'm here because I am, quote unquote, a medical mystery," Errolan answered, sardonic smirk worn like a battle scar. "I'm also currently unemployed, but I don't think they're keeping me here to feed me free food because they're feeling charitable."

"I don't understand. I just can't see anything _wrong_ with you, per se."

"There's nothing wrong with me, at least as far as my health goes. I'm perfectly healthy. Healthier than a horse. I might live to see my grandkids, assuming I find a woman stupid enough to carry my progeny."

He stopped, pulled up his shirt so it covered the necklace, and gazed at the other end of the ward, where Frobisher was bleeding out again and an emergency team had gathered to force-feed her a potion cocktail, while an aide helped clean the blood off of Rolf Scamander, who seemed more concerned with Frobisher's well-being than his clothing. The aide casted a simple _scourgify_ to clean the younger Scamander's jacket, and Errolan coughed.

"I lost my magic," he said. "All of it. I am, for lack of a better description, a common Muggle."

It was not often that Hermione Granger was lost for words, but it was even rarer that she was lost for _thoughts._ She didn't even know how to begin comprehending the concept of losing one's magic, of having one's greatest gift and lifeblood taken away. It was mind-boggling, and hopelessly tragic.

So she asked questions, since she didn't have any answers.

"How – when did it happen?"

"Two weeks before the end, at the massacre at Charleston-on-the-Avon," he said, voice dead and eyes deader. "I was staying there with the Weird Sisters. My sister and I are good friends with the band, and they'd offered me a place to stay during the war. When the attack started, though, the band wasn't content to stay inside our well-fortified house. No, Heathcote and Orsino were practically leading the bloody resistance, weren't they? Always were a bit daft, and I guess that's why they died within thirty minutes of that bastard Greyback showing his grimy face.

"I went out with them, naturally. Saw those two die. Greyback killed Orsino – ripped half his neck off. Orsino got a Death Eater before that, though, and after Greyback snapped one of his wands he got a nice curse on him with the other; obviously the idiot werewolf hadn't heard that Orsino used two wands to drum. He was right famous for that, too… Heathcote was killed by a man using a whip of fire. Went straight down, never took another breath."

Hermione was thrown back two years, to a time when she had been caught across the chest with the very same spell, cast by a furiously silent Antonin Dolohov. She still remembered the look of fury and hatred on the man's face; she remembered the nausea and utter pain when the spell hit.

"After that we all got split up amongst the other villagers, who were trying their damnedest but not making any progress. I stuck with Myron, who had always been my best mate, and he acted the hero, he did, got into a three-on-one duel with some Death Eaters and nearly won, but in the end they got him across the chest. By this point I'd disengaged myself from my own battle and distracted the three Death Eaters so I could Apparate him back to the house. I spent the next few hours tending to him, and I could hear the battle going on outside the entire time. He lost too much blood, though; they'd used a dark spell that prevented his blood from clotting, and I had no answers."

Errolan cleared his throat and toyed with the golden chain. "When Myron died I went back out to rejoin the battle, but by this point it was nearly done. I saw one torturing a young girl. I killed him," he said. "Another one saw and hit me with a fierce Body-Bind Curse, and then someone else started fighting him and he forgot about me. At the end… once they'd killed everyone, and when they'd started to put the bodies together, they picked me up and threw me in the pile, still petrified. I don't know if they knew I was alive. Probably did, sick bastards.

"I don't need to tell you what it feels like to be in a pile of a hundred dead people and unable to move. Luckily I was in the middle, because when they started throwing curses at the corpses for fun, I was protected by the other bodies. At some point I passed out, probably from a lack of air. When I woke up, I felt unusually cold, and sticky, too. I thought at first that I was lying in a pool of blood, but I noticed that the blood seemed to climb my body. I tried to move, but couldn't – something cold and metallic seeped into my mouth, my ears, nostrils, everything. I didn't suffocate… I'm not sure it was even solid. It felt almost pleasant, to tell the truth. Like a weight lifted off my shoulders.

"When the salvage team arrived and began taking down the bodies, the spell had worn off. They were using some powerful magic, I think: wards had been placed around the pile, and it took them a while to get to me. I felt the substance crawl from my body at first, as if it were excited by these new people; but when the spells started it sunk away and left me, and when they found me it was gone.

"They asked me if I was all right, and I said yes. They asked if I had my wand, and I said yes. They asked me to reveal which spell I last cast, and I said I would, but when I went to try it the wand didn't work." He brought his knee to his chin and looked up at the ceiling, moving position for the first time in several minutes. "I tried another wand, and it didn't work either. I think they were suspicious at first, but when I went under Veritaserum, they began to believe me. And eventually, after the victory on the second of May, I ended up here as a case study. Which basically means I'm someone for the trainee Healers to poke and prod and ask questions because I'm absolutely fascinating on a theoretical level and not much else."

"I'm sorry," said Hermione, because there wasn't much else to say.

"Don't be," said Errolan, rather begrudgingly.

"You remind me of Mr. Filch," Luna stated. "He's the caretaker at Hogwarts. He's a Squib, I've heard, and he's particularly nasty and unhappy. You remind me of him."

"Hm, I wonder why."

"He was at the battle on the second. I was there, too," Luna continued, and Hermione grew increasingly uncomfortable as Luna went on, increasingly unperturbed. "I remember, I saw Professor Lupin die, much in the same way your friend did." Hermione almost spoke to stop her, but something about Luna wouldn't allow interruptions. "The same man, I believe, killed him. He was a rather nasty man with a twisted face who looked especially unpleasant. What's worse is that Professor Lupin's wife was killed, too, and by her aunt of all people. I thought that wasn't a good way to treat a family member, and now their son has no parents. I wonder, though, if the Lupins would rather be living Squibs or dead wizards."

Errolan looked away, and Luna smiled. Her way of speaking morally was unique, to say the least, and said more as a question than an answer, but it was obvious that her words had hit home with the disgruntled former wizard.

"That's terrible," he finally said. "Terrible."

"Yes," said Luna, "it is. Very much so, in fact."

"It's said that Merlin lost his magic once," he said after a long silence. "My sister brought me a book of legends and dog-eared that story. She's been doing that a lot to make me feel better." Hermione found Gwenog Jones across the room, speaking to Fergus Finnigan, but the woman's eyes constantly flitted back to the bed of the room's healthiest yet most troubled occupant. "Merlin lost his magic in a bet with Maeve, according to several tales. She took his magic and stored it inside a necklace and wore it day and night. As the story tells it, Merlin snuck into her castle, dressed as a servant, and replaced the necklace with a snake as she slept, and when he swallowed the necklace whole he regained his magic. Stupid children's story, really, but it's nice to think about."

Hermione's eyes traveled to the golden chain around his neck and she said, "No, it isn't. It's not bad to hope."

Her mind was filled with the words of Errolan Jones and Vicky Frobisher and, unfortunately, Cormac McLaggen as she Side-Alonged with Luna to the Burrow. They'd been two hours at the hospital, and she was unsurprised to find the Burrow bustling with people, Weasleys and friends, everyone celebrating a well-played game of Quidditch.

"My two favorite girls!" said Mr. Weasley happily when he saw them. Behind him, Ginny raised an eyebrow, and Luna giggled. "So glad you made it back. How was St. Mungo's?"

"Good, they're doing good work there," said Hermione, somewhat evasively. She didn't think she could begin to describe the visit, at least not in words. She really needed a Pensieve. "How'd the game go?"

"Just brilliant, it was long enough to get several rotations and lots of faces in and there was some shockingly good Quidditch played, as well. We invited everyone back for a drink and some socializing, and as you can see, many of them took us up on that offer."

That was no overstatement. She'd never seen so many people at the Burrow, or at least not since Fleur and Bill's wedding – since the war. Lee Jordan, Ernie Macmillan, Professor Flitwick, Hagrid, Oliver Wood, Cho Chang, Amos Diggory, Dean Thomas – and more surprising than anyone, Draco Malfoy, standing sourly between Daphne and Astoria Greengrass.

"Evening, Draco," she said, determined to try to be friendly with him. "Glad you could make it."

"Evening, Granger," he replied, and that was all she could expect from him.

"Astoria Greengrass – I think we met a couple times when you were at Hogwarts," said the younger sister, and Hermione shook her hand. "I must say, I quite like the house. It's quaint, but so pleasant."

"My younger sister is exceedingly talkative," added an amused Daphne, or at least Hermione thought she was amused. With Daphne it was hard to tell. "I'm sorry to have forced her upon you."

Hermione made at-times uneasy conversation with the Slytherin trio for five minutes, during which time Luna disappeared, and eventually the Astoria dragged her sister and Malfoy to go say hello to Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, leaving a chuckling Hermione in their wake. _That_ would be an interesting conversation. She hoped Ron hadn't seen him yet.

"Is that Malfoy?"

Hermione turned and smiled as she saw her boyfriend, chuckling at her prophetic thought. "Yes. He's on his best behavior, don't worry."

"Hm, I'll believe that when I see it," Ron grumbled. He was somewhat sweaty and his hair was windblown, and in her opinion he looked positively glorious. "How was St. Mungo's?"

"Fine, fine. How was the game?" she asked.

"Great!" he exclaimed. "Speaking of Malfoy, he scored twice on me, but we ended up winning when Harry just barely beat out Charlie for the Snitch. It was a load of fun, anyway. Wish you could've been there."

"I know. But I really needed to go to this event."

"I know, I know. It's just… sometimes I feel like you're over-stretching yourself. I… I just want to be able to relax with you every now and then. We haven't really been able to do that."

"We will," she promised. "There's just been a lot going on. We'll have time soon, though."

"When?" Ron asked sardonically. "When in between you pretty much writing a magical _Magna Carta_ or trying to keep Kingsley in office or create a new form of government or save the world one sick ward at a time? Not that I blame you. But it's a bit much, don't you think?"

She struggled to keep her temper under control and to keep her underlying stress from showing and taking itself out on this fabulously caring but oblivious teenage boy. When she didn't have an immediate reply Ron bit his lip and said, "Yeah, I know. I'll go talk to George, okay? We can have it out later."

He left, and she let out a breath she'd been holding for half the conversation.

"Great," she murmured.

"What's great?" asked a new voice as two hands came around to cover her eyes. "And by the by, guess who?"

"Harry James Potter, if you don't want me to hex you –"

"All right, you win!" he replied hurriedly, laughing. He moved around to face her, bottle of butterbeer in his hand and large grin on his face, his hair even more windblown than Ron's. "What's on your mind, Granger?"

Something about him made her smile despite her troubles with Ron. Perhaps the best, and most underrated, outcome of the war was the change in Harry. A huge weight had been lifted off of his shoulders, and the freedom from being his generation's Atlas had in turn produced a happier, more outgoing Harry Potter. That in itself was a great reward, as while Harry would often show flashes of his good humor, he had grown steadily more reserved as the war went on. He still wasn't particularly good about talking about his feelings – something to work on, she mentally noted – but she did notice he was much more affectionate with his friends, particularly herself and Ron, both of whom he would regularly pull into a very unHarry-like one-armed hug whenever he felt particularly boisterous, and being in the company of her two idiotically lovable boys, she saw why Sirius Black and James Potter had etched themselves so irreversibly into the memories of their peers during their time together.

The butterbeer probably didn't hurt, either.

"Just haven't had time to spend with Ron and he's rightfully disappointed," Hermione replied. "He thinks I'm stretching myself thin."

"You probably are," said Harry, "but you've always done that and it's worked out pretty well so far. You could use a day off or two, though. I've been saying that since first year."

"No you haven't!"

"Well, only out loud since last month. I'm reasonably sure enough in my defensive skills by now that I think I can safely say that without fear of growing an extra ear."

"You never know, Potter…"

He grinned again and downed the rest of his butterbeer. She watched him vanish his bottle wandlessly and thought again of her St. Mungo's visit.

"Harry, what would you do if your magic was taken away?" she asked suddenly.

"Er, what? Taken away? For good?" She nodded. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels, eyes up in the air as he mulled the question over. "I know better than to question you, but I'm guessing this has something to do with the hospital visit?"

"Yes. How'd you know?"

"Talked to Luna earlier. Merlin, I love that girl. She's delightfully bizarre. Anyway, I don't really know what I'd do with myself. It depends. I think – this is going to sound stupid and corny but I don't bloody care, you asked, after all – as long as I still had my friends – uh, you and Ron and everybody, you know – I think I'd still be fairly happy. I'd be properly peeved that I lost my magic, and probably pretty bitter, too, but I'd manage, I think. I hope so, at least."

"That's not stupid at all, Harry," she said, and he smiled awkwardly for a long moment before she enveloped him in a crushing hug, suddenly emotional. "I – don't ever think that's stupid, you prat!"

"All right, I promise I won't!" he wheezed, laughing again. He hugged her back and brought one hand to her hair, twisting a lock in his fingers. "Is this the stress talking or am I just that great of a guy?"

"A little bit of both, but don't let it get to your head," Hermione sniffed, and she pulled away, embarrassed at her outburst. "I'm sorry. It's been a long day."

"I know. You really could use a day off, you know. Ow! Don't hit me!" he cried.

Hermione smirked. "So much for your 'defensive skills,' Potter."

"That was a cheap shot, _Granger,"_ Harry responded with added malice. "Hm, at least Ginny didn't see that soul-destroying hug. She saw me hug Luna and I think she was a bit miffed."

"You two really need to figure out what's going on between you," Hermione stated.

"Trust me, I know. Bugger all, I _know._ But speaking of Weasleys," he said, changing the subject, "you should go find Ron. Maybe I'm biased because I'm his best mate and all, but I know he cares a lot about you and the large majority of the time you're his top priority. He knows – we know – that you've got a lot on your plate, but I think he'd appreciate feeling like, every once in a while, that he's _your_ top priority."

"You're wiser than you look, Potter," she sighed, knowing defeat when she saw it.

"Thanks, Granger… I think."

She saw Ron at a distance, speaking to George, and when he glanced over at his two friends she made eye contact with him. Making sure to keep his attention, she slowly nodded, and he smiled, understanding her unspoken message. Harry stepped back, smiling, and allowed her a path she didn't need to ask for.


	4. Muggles

"Muggles."

-

_It has been our prerogative to ignore the Muggle world for the last four centuries. This has worked out relatively well for us so far – we have escaped much of the persecution of the Middle Ages and both of our societies are booming._

_But there will come a time when we will have to faced our least favorite cousins, because despite our best efforts, we are affecting each other without meaning to._

_While Muggles affect us through their culture and technology, disseminated by Muggle-born witches and wizards, we are affecting them in a much subtler way. This is not surprising, as we have the most powerful tool of all: magic._

_And that most powerful tool is finding Muggles – and changing them._

_-_

The days of August were the longest and hottest days of the year, and to add to that they were also the slowest. August meant the impending return of the school year, which meant that teenagers and primary schoolers spent their last days of freedom in the cinemas and theme parks and football pitches of London, determinedly setting their minds to anything but books and knowledge.

It also meant that the college-types slowly trickled away as they prepared for university, and those patrons wouldn't return until September, when University College (and the University of London) and LSE and schools of lesser renown but housing equally inquisitive students went into session, and then all was well in his shelf-framed world. While many of the fortysomething parents left for a late summer vacation, the older customers tended to stick about the shop since they had no families to please or demanding jobs to satisfy.

He liked the older customers just fine, since he found they often had the most wonderful stories to tell, but he enjoyed the innocence of a child picking out the newest _Star Trek_ book, or the humor of a teenager going into the sexual education section on a dare. Children, next to seniors, were often the most talkative, and Remus was content to let them babble his ear off as he helped them with their purchases; it reminded him of his youth, of when things had been simpler. Teenagers were less outgoing, but they were still better than young professionals (he thought self-deridingly) and he understood their reserved nature. It was not, as many claimed, arrogance; it was merely a mark of their struggles in balancing youth and maturity, innocence and responsibility. It was natural not to trust anyone over thirty. He wasn't quite thirty yet, but he was plenty aware that he looked it and then some.

In the absence of human company he kept council with the books lining the shelves, the walls, the racks near the graphic novels, the half-off carts in front, and even the limited space below the front windows. He had always loved books. He wasn't sure if that was a byproduct of the attack or if the attack had only increased his appetite for stories; he did remember quite vividly being ten years old and determined to love reading since, he reasoned, books would be the only friends he would ever have.

Over the past seven years, he had taken to arguing with himself to pass the time, mainly because he had no one else to argue with and it kept his mind relatively sharp. Every day it was a different topic – vanilla versus chocolate, Muggle music versus magic music, Kirk versus Picard. Today he had decided on one of his favorites: new books versus old books.

He had found that it was an impossible question to answer, and that was precisely why he adored it so. It was too easy to claim love for old books, the novels torn by tender love and affection, dog-eared and creased across the binding. There was a certain charm to yellowed pages, to the smell of a book read many times over, to the allure of a tale centuries old.

But working in the store had drastically changed his viewpoint and opened his mind to the virtues of the new hardcover in mint condition. The primly pressed ivory-white pages were a temptation he rarely was able to resist, and the fine gloss and focused print was a welcome sight for sore eyes worn down by books printed in less technologically-advanced times (and times when paragraphs hadn't been commonplace). New books, he thought, held a mysterious air; they were new stories, new adventures, and that's what made them so curious. They weren't classics, but that was entirely the point. They were his to read – his to befriend for the very first time – and through his devotion, they transformed and took on a new meaning, growing more powerful with each reread and each recounting of an increasingly timeless story.

These books, Remus decided, were his favorite. The books that had started out as just another release, but had captured him with their wit and keen eye for character and adventure. The books he read over and over again, the books he folded cover-to-cover so they were easier to read the fourth go 'round. Perhaps it was cheating, but he _did_ sincerely love his new books – but even more so when they aged in his presence. It should have been no surprise to him to come to this conclusion; he'd always been known to be quick to compromise.

The long days of August meant more time spent in the company of his books, and while he still preferred the company of people (most of the time), in this way he made it through the most difficult month of the year. He would occasionally look up from behind the desk and see a customer approaching with a stack of books in hand, but for the most part he was left alone.

The main exception was the record store customers. He wasn't particularly fond of the situation, but he understood the logic of it. Music and books were two popular entertainment industries, and it made sense to consolidate them under the same company, and even the same roof. For the most part, the record store did not disturb him, as it had its own cash register and generally the two stores remained distinctly separate despite there being no boundary between them. Multiple times a day, however, someone would wander over to his counter with tape cassettes and books in hand, and he would ring them up and send them on their way with a minute's worth of congenial conversation.

On less happy occasions, he was asked to man the other register due to an unexpected staff shortage. He liked music, but in his opinion the 80's so far had been a disappointment in the Muggle music scene (eight years into the decade). Still, there were quality acts, and he did do his best to enjoy the cultural education he received via the book and record store. He'd been practically living as a Muggle for going on four years, and over the past couple of years alone he'd become aware of terms such as Sonic Youth, _Star Trek: The Next Generation _(with which he'd quickly fallen in love, and he did his best to catch reruns of the original series on his third-hand TV in his flat in southern London), Public Enemy, XTC, _Fawlty Towers_, Michael Jackson (he'd rung up three copies of _Bad_ by noon), Indiana Jones, and Bruce Springsteen.

Ms. Gregory, who owned the two stores, was kind, intelligent, and fairly attractive. She was also his age. On the other hand, she announced her engagement before he ever considered asking her out, and she became Mrs. Youngblood entirely too soon for his liking, although the thought of a relationship with an unknowing Muggle for someone in his condition was laughable. He appreciated her leniency on his absences, which he tried to keep as minimal as possible, and on the few occasions when he accepted one of her invitations to a party or dinner, he found Mr. Youngblood to be disgustingly handsome and unfortunately quite nice, and Remus very reluctantly conceded that he quite liked Mrs. Youngblood's choice of husband and couldn't begrudge the man a relationship that hadn't ever had a shot to begin with.

While Mrs. Youngblood-formerly-Gregory – or Judy as she begged him to call her – was a nice acquaintance, she was nearly all Remus had in the way of friends. He was undoubtedly aware that this fact was extremely unhealthy, and that it probably indicated that he'd never gotten over the events of Halloween 1981, but he didn't feel especially compelled to do anything about it. He had tea at Andromeda's every once in a blue moon, and he sent Dumbledore socks every Christmas and made a visit during the summer, but he was content to remain in his shell of solitude. He knew, if Lily had been alive, that she'd have scolded him up and down Commercial Street for his sheer idiocy and tendency to indulge in self-pity, but Lily wasn't alive, and that was that.

On this particular day, which incidentally was a Wednesday (Remus's least favorite day of the week for reasons too varied and arcane to list), he had set his feet on top of the desk and was lounged back in his armchair reading his Oxford paperback translation of _The Canterbury Tales_, skimming _The Pardoner's Tale _for the second time in three days.

It was his favorite tale of the bunch, particularly since it reminded him of the Tale of the Three Brothers. He'd read a fascinating essay two weeks prior, passed along to him by Dumbledore, positing that Chaucer had either known the Peverell brothers or been related to them, and ever since he'd read that essay he'd had a thirst for the courtesan's magnum opus that still hadn't been sated. Personally, he assumed the Peverell brothers, if they'd ever existed (which he was inclined to think was Dumbledore's unstated position on the matter), had been centuries before Chaucer, and more likely contemporaries of the Founders of Hogwarts, but it was interesting all the same.

"_This youngest rogue who'd gone into the town,  
Often in fancy rolled he up and down  
The beauty of those florins new and bright.  
"O Lord," thought he, "if so be that I might  
Have all this treasure to myself alone,  
There is no man who lives beneath the throne  
Of God that should be then so merry as I."_

"Excuse me?"

He set the book in his lap and turned his head up to address the speaker. The girl in question was around eighteen, and had dark hair and stony eyes. She wore a bright green backpack and some kind of wristband, and _she was standing near his table!_

"Yes?" he replied, trying to hide his surprise and displeasure. _His_ table was a small circular table near the front desk on which he'd left some of his less Muggle-appropriate books. He would have set them under the front desk, but there wasn't room with all of Lenina's books and Felix's comics, and the table was back a ways, anyway, well away from wandering eyes. To cap it off he'd set a rather strong Muggle-Repelling Charm on the table, and in two years it hadn't failed once.

"I was just wondering what these books were," said the girl.

"Some of my personal effects," he responded quickly. Then he stopped. He realized, that if the charm hadn't worked, that it meant that this girl must be magical. If she were magical, that surely meant she'd recognize the texts. He sat upward in his chair and peered over to his table, groaning when he saw the titles on top: _Advanced Transfiguration: The Wizard's Guide to Change. Magic and Its Role in the Renaissance. Muggle or Magic: The Debate Raging Over Squibs' Roles in a Magical Society._

"I don't recognize any titles." She thumbed through the first book, _Transfiguration._ "Is this a fantasy or something? It says stuff about magic."

"Yes, it's a fantasy. I'm somewhat of a geek," Remus replied, attempting to look sheepish. Meanwhile, his mind whirred, doing its damnedest to figure out this girl. "I'm Remus. What's your name?"

"Karen."

"Nice to meet you. Where do you go to school, Karen?"

"University College," she responded uninterestedly, further confirming his suspicions. "That's a cool optical illusion. It almost looks like the diagram is moving."

"That's a very rare book. It's known for its revolutionary use of foils and holographics." A bald-faced lie, but he'd become a good liar between his time at Hogwarts and his time in this bookstore.

He decided to try something. Discreetly drawing his wand, he attempted to push the girl away from the table with a nonverbal Banishing Charm.

He tried four times. The girl didn't budge.

He attempted a Stinging Hex. She was unaffected. Growing somewhat frustrated, he attempted a stronger Stinging Hex, aware in the back of his mind that this could seriously hurt someone without any defenses.

"Ow!" she exclaimed, rubbing her arm. A red spot had appeared, but it looked like nothing more than a wasp sting.

Clearly this girl _did_ have defenses. The question was: how?

"There's been a couple bees buzzing around in here," he said, quickly moving around the desk to examine her arm and pocketing his wand. Her eyes moved for the books, but he "accidentally" poked her on the sting, and she flinched again. "Sorry. You should probably get some ointment for that. That's a very nasty sting."

"There's a pharmacy a block away," Karen stated. "I can just head down there and be back in a couple minutes."

"You should hurry down," he advised her. "I'll still be here when you get back. My books, too."

She hesitated for several pain-staking moments, but his evident sincerity eventually convinced her, and with no small amount of relief he personally escorted her out of the store. After he'd gone back inside and made sure no one was around to witness his next action, he drew his wand once more and casted the strongest Muggle-Repelling Charm he was capable of on the front entrance. While the girl had shown some natural immunity to several of his spells, she had been affected by stronger magic, and he hoped this would be no different. It would also serve as a test.

He stood near the front window and waited. Ten minutes passed, and he began to worry that he had cast too strong of a charm when he saw her walking down the sidewalk, bandage over her sting and a jar of lotion in hand. She walked briskly, he noted, with a sense of purpose, and her eyes were clearly set on the front door of the bookstore. It occurred to him that he hadn't had the presence of mind to think of a backup plan if his charm was ineffective on her, but he was too transfixed on his Muggle experiment to pay much mind to that troubling fact.

She drew closer to the bookstore, and passed the record store, and he suddenly grew quite certain that his charm had been ineffective, which could mean several things, each more curious than the last. At the last second, though, not five feet from the store entrance, she stopped, puzzled, and stared at the sidewalk ahead. She turned right, then turned left, and stopped to think, before turning back and heading the way she had came. Remus smiled and relaxed.

This determined several things about the nature of this girl Karen. First of all, she was most definitely a Muggle – the second Muggle-Repelling Charm wouldn't have worked on her at all if she had been a witch. Secondly, she was resilient (or immune) to magic up to a certain extent, but after a certain threshold stronger magic had a definite, although weakened, effect on her.

It wasn't unheard of for a Muggle to show resilience to magic, although from his knowledge it was ridiculously rare and Karen had been his first experience with a resilient Muggle in person. Their almost inexplicable rarity should have meant that they were well-studied and documented, but it actually meant the opposite, as most wizards and witches were more interested in commercial technology than theoretical research.

He realized that he should have stopped her to interview her, but it was too late now, and even so he would've felt an uneasy air of condescension, as if he were treating her no better than a lab rat. Still, her _talent_ was interesting, at the very least, and something he could ponder in the remaining dog days of summer.

After removing the charm, he carefully stowed his wand away in his back pocket (Alastor would have his arse, no pun intended) and retreated to the desk area. Advanced Transfiguration: The Wizard's Guide to Change was still splayed open on the table, and thankfully the diagram the girl had referred to was an unusually stationary one, and the few movements could be explained by an optical illusion, he supposed, although it was somewhat of a stretch. He knew he should probably err on the side of caution and call in Obliviators, but they would disrupt the store and no matter how the spin team put it, it would end up making him look irresponsible – which, in all fairness, he was, but he rather liked his job at the moment and as a result wasn't keen to advertise that singular personality defect.

He closed the book and set it aside in a neat stack with the others. Hidden from view by the oversized books had been his bookbag, which he brought to work everyday and took home every night. It was well-beaten and patched up in numerous places, but he was very fond of it, and it was his most reliable companion. Under the bookbag lay a folder. This folder had not been disturbed from its slumber on top of the table for over two months, when he'd taken it home to chew it over and then brought back when he realized for the fifth time in two years that he was at a dead end, and that something was missing, something essential to his understanding of the issue.

He opened the folder and flipped to the last page, which was filled with phrases such as "Muggle-born" and "fertility" and "environmental concerns" and "the question of hereditary magic." Embarrassingly absent from the page, he noticed, was one simple word: "Muggle." He had spent so many hours pursuing the concept of genetic and environmental concerns in magical reproduction that he had forgotten a much simpler concern, a concern that was obviously necessary to his understanding of the issue: the effect of magic on Muggles.

While he'd considered the reasons for a decline or boom in the Muggle-born fertility rate, he'd never stopped to address the larger, and more basic, question of Muggles themselves. It had been pig-headed and foolish of him to expect to solve such a complex and specialized issue without a greater comprehension and overview of the field as a whole.

His eyes moved to the back of the table, where a copy of Rousseau's The Social Contract lay next to Newton's Principia. He smiled thoughtfully.

To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Completely different field of science, but it was a nice and handy metaphor that could describe what he was seeing now. It was idiotic, imbecilic, really, to think that wizards could use magic so much – and during times of war and Quidditch matches, so abuse magic – and expect it not to have an effect on Muggles. It was only logic. He didn't quite know, but he was willing to bet that environmental magic levels had gone through the roof since the time of Hogwart's founding.

Other environmental factors had changed in that time – level of lead in the air, pesticides in rivers, and so on – that hadn't prompted a response from Muggle biology, but lead and pesticides weren't magic. Magic was a rare and immutable form of energy (so it was posited), the immense potential for change crackling in the air around him, and exploited by its chosen carriers. Magic, unlike pollutants and natural elements, had the ability to radically change a species through mere exposure to it.

It didn't mean that a Squib was going to suddenly gain magical powers. But, he reasoned, Filch – for Filch was the most adaptable example, since Filch had spent his life in a place with magic like none other – could very well have been affected by magic in ways he couldn't imagine. Those effects could be subtle: maybe they meant that Filch's children (God forbid he had any) would be magical. Perhaps they meant that Filch could more clearly see magic than any other Muggle or Squib.

Perhaps it meant he had become partially immune to magic.

He wasn't relying on pure conjecture at this point. There had been marked cases of such Muggles (and even one or two Squibs, if he recalled correctly) throughout history, especially in the last two centuries. The reasons speculated for such rare adaptations had been varied, but magic itself was the most basic reason. Why then would anyone show a resilience to this rare form of energy unless that energy had touched them and changed them! It was not in the genetic nature of a Muggle – a human, even – to be resilient to magic.

Why then were the non-magical Roma of northern Austria determined to be partially immune to magic in a study by Bleinhelm Stalk in 1970? (That book, too, was on the table, and one of his personal favorites.) The relative populations of that gypsy community had shown no resilience – in fact, only members of the immune population, or those who had traveled in a similar geographic pattern, had shown any immunity! It couldn't be merely genetic. Perhaps the descendants of the community would also show immunity, making the issue genetic in nature, but it didn't change the fact that the resilience had started as an environmental effect. He supposed it went against evolutionary theory (he was quite familiar with the work of Darwin and kept up with the findings of modern researchers like the Grants) to assume that mutation was caused by the environment – when the environment should merely be exerting sexual and natural selection pressures – but that was Muggle science. Magic was an entirely different beast.

"Remus? I was wondering if you wouldn't mind staying an hour to help clean up after the author discussion tonight."

Mrs. Youngblood's mouth hung open, her head jutted from between two bookshelves, waiting for a reply. Remus stared at her, trying to determine her lipstick color, before ridding himself of his childish thoughts and smiling kindly at her.

"Of course, Judy, I'd love to," he replied.

She smiled back at him and winked. "Thanks, Remus. God, I wish my husband were as easy-going as you, sometimes. Nice shirt, by the way."

She retreated behind the shelves and left him standing alone near the counter. He was quite sure that she had been flirting with him. He would never understand women.

He turned back to the table and began organizing the books together, this time making sure that his Muggle books remained on top. He withdrew his wand and recast a much stronger Muggle-Repelling Charm and grabbed the sheet under the table that he had used on occasion to cover his possessions, draping it over the sides.

Then he began to think.

-

The reconstruction of Hogsmeade had been a rampant success, and by the first week of September the process was nearly completed. Aberforth had said as much in his usual gruff way while serving her butterbeer out of a dirty glass she'd made sure to clean herself.

"Bloody Ministry workers up here day and night, day and night, I tell you," he grunted. He leered at her. "Not that there's anything wrong with Ministry workers. Don't take that as an invitation, though."

"Believe me, I understand you well enough to know that," Hermione replied. "I haven't seen the school much. How's it doing?"

"It's almost all in one piece. I don't know. It's not like I'm up there all the time, is it?"

Something whinnied in a back room and he cursed under his breath, setting his filthy rag down and heading out from the bar without excusing himself.

Hermione drank her butterbeer and checked her watch.

She was the only patron of the bar at the moment. The Hog's Head itself had never been the most popular place in the world, except (apparently) when the world itself was at stake.

She thought of Ariana Dumbledore's half-vacant smile and the portrait in the other room.

"Last time I leave it off its collar," grumbled Aberforth as he returned to his post behind the bar, picking up his rag and flopping it over his shoulder. Something outside caught his eye, and he grabbed her mug without asking. "Your ride's here."

Hermione fought the urge to roll her eyes at the barman's determined misanthropy and carried herself out of the dingy pub, where a carriage was parked in the middle of the road. The door lay open, and she stopped to pet the threstral before stepping inside and taking a seat.

The door closed by itself and the threstral started forward. It carried her up the hill, past the Shrieking Shack, to the little road ascending from the valley to the school, and she watched the trees pass outside her window, remembering prior rides in the company of silly boys and flirtatious girls. The carriage paused as the gate began to open, and she noticed that bars along the fence were still twisted out of position, and that the gate itself looked like it had been replaced. Uprooted trees had been gathered in a pile near a pond (probably by Hagrid), and several of the towers still sported nick marks and gashes of missing stone.

The carriage pulled up to the front of the castle, and she stepped out and approached the front doors, bag thrown across her shoulders. The front gates were also new, and undignified black streaks marked the area where the metal had been soldered to the framework of the arch. As if recognizing her, the doors opened without provocation.

She knew from the time that most classes would be in session, and her walk to the Headmistress's office was a solitary and quiet journey. The gargoyles still guarded the door, and when she approached them, she enunciated in a clear voice, "The only one he ever feared."

The gargoyles stepped aside and allowed her to pass. The winding staircase was still the same. The torches were the same. It was funny, she thought, how much was so utterly unchanged. She'd half-expected a brand new school.

She thought about knocking at the inner door, but before she could, a voice from the other side announced, "Come in," and she obeyed.

Professor McGonagall waited for her on the other side, not behind her desk, but standing, perusing one of the many shelves in the office. She smiled at the sight of her visitor, and said fondly, "Hello, Hermione. I'm glad you could make it. I know you're busy – I quite nearly had to threaten Kingsley's life to get his permission for your visit."

"It's no problem, Headmistress. I'm glad to be any help," Hermione said. She noticed the eyes of the former headmasters upon her, and tried to force herself not to look to the left but failed. To her relief (and disappointment), Dumbledore and Snape were fast asleep.

"No surprises there. I was not planning on going through a full plan of what you should and shouldn't say, since I assume that you read my letter."

"Of course."

"Good," said McGonagall. "It was my initial plan to use the Room of Requirement for this meeting, but, as I was informed by a very persistent Euan Abercrombie, the Gobstones Club has reserved the room for its first meeting," she added, with a hint of humor. "Instead, Professor Weasley offered up the use of his classroom for the morning. Seeing as there's no reason to delay our visit any longer, I shall summon the students."

She held out her wand and with a moment's concentration produced a brilliantly lit Patronus, a tawny cat licking its paws. She nodded and the cat split into several different beams of light, shooting out of the office and phasing through the walls.

"After you, my dear," McGonagall said, putting her wand away.

They walked in companionable silence. Hermione watched carefully as her former professor walked next to her. Her limp was not as demonstrated as it had been immediately after the battle, which was encouraging, particularly since she knew how much McGonagall had hated carrying that walking stick during fifth year. McGonagall seemed to catch Hermione's gaze and smiled primly.

"I assure you my leg is constantly improving. So far the students have remained fortunately quiet about my awkward limp, and hopefully I will recover before anyone too foolish to know differently says anything about it."

"Of course, I didn't mean –"

McGonagall came to an abrupt stop and knocked twice on the door to the Transfiguration classroom.

"I'm in here, come on in."

The door opened, and the two women stepped inside. If McGonagall felt nostalgic walking into her old classroom, she did not show it; as a result, Hermione, too, tried to hide her emotional response to the familiar smell of parchment and singed buttons.

Sitting at the desk was Bill Weasley, donned in Hogwarts robes and wearing his customary earring. Behind the desk, standing next to him, was Fleur, and Hermione noticed that she was crying.

"Would you like us to give you a moment, Bill?" McGonagall asked politely.

"No, no, we're just about done," Bill assured her. He turned, grinning, to his wife, and leaned in close to her, so that his chin was almost against her belly. "Are you sure?"

"Positively," replied Fleur, sniffling. Hermione somewhat randomly noticed her accent had improved.

"That's wonderful, love!" Bill exclaimed, and he kissed her stomach. "Let's go back to the office, they want to use my classroom for a talk."

Fleur nodded, and turned to the two guests, beaming. "Eet was good to see you, 'eadmistress, Hermione."

"You too, Fleur," responded Hermione, secretly pleased that Fleur had finally said her name correctly.

"The pleasure was mine, Mrs. Weasley," McGonagall said with a smile. "Would I be correct to assume that congratulations are in order?"

"Perhaps," said a coy Fleur, and she flushed prettily.

Bill stood and led his wife to the door in back of the classroom, pecking her on the lips and whispering something in her ear. She nodded and disappeared into the professor's office.

He turned around and said sheepishly, "She's a bit emotional. It's been a big day."

"I quite understand, Bill," said McGonagall. "Congratulations. You and Fleur are going to make wonderful parents."

"Yes, Bill," Hermione agreed. "You'll be great. You have to promise to keep us updated though!"

"All right, all right," Bill laughed. He gathered up a few rolls of parchment off of his desk and sighed. "It's not as easy as it looks. I'm good at Transfiguration, but not exactly brilliant."

"You'll make do. I confess that I might have made the subject seem more difficult to teach than it actually is. I am not without my own ego, you know."

"You're talking to a guy who wears dragon earrings – trust me, I understand," stated Bill light-heartedly. His face turned more serious. "Did you hear back from her?"

"Yes, and her answer was the same. I believe she will consider it next year depending on the circumstances. Sturgis is ready to stay on for two years."

"Fleur can always look after Teddy. Especially now that we're going to have a baby in the house anyway and we're both going to be home more often… it's convenient for everyone, and I know she'd be brilliant."

"Excuse me, but what does Teddy have to do with anything?" Hermione interjected.

The two Hogwarts staff members shared a look and McGonagall folded her hands in front of her waist. "I have offered Andromeda Tonks the Transfiguration post whenever she feels she can handle the position and the demands of raising her grandson. Understandably, she has declined the position for the present, although we're hoping that will change."

"She's brilliant at Transfiguration," said Bill, sweeping his hair out of his eyes. "That whole family is, if you haven't noticed, and Tonks was a Metamorphmagus and so is Teddy… can you imagine how interesting _that_ class would be? It's just a matter of figuring out everything with Teddy. Harry's got Auror training and all, and right now Fleur's working but when the baby comes we'll probably work something else out, or at least figure out a way to have her work from home, but who knows."

"Sturgis Podmore is currently teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts," McGonagall explained. "He was less than enthusiastic about the job, considering the curse and the fact that he's spent two years in Azkaban for doing nothing wrong, but I assured him the curse had been broken with Voldemort's death and he agreed to take the post temporarily. Bill wishes to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts, as that is his specialty, but Podmore's not particularly skilled at Transfiguration and that post has been hard to fill, especially since a certain Mrs. Weasley –" she directed a humorous glare at Bill, who shrugged and winked at Hermione "– decided to engage herself in diplomatic affairs instead of teaching at Hogwarts. Why we need diplomacy after a war, I could never know," she finished dryly.

"I'll make sure to pass on that message, Minerva," said Bill. "I'd best be back with the blushing mother-to-be. Good to see you again, Hermione."

After their conversation Bill retreated to his office, and Hermione and McGonagall stood at the entrance of the classroom. Hermione felt rather like a schoolgirl again, as she wished to sit but at the same time wanted only to follow the headmistress's example. McGonagall, for her part, walked to the front of the classroom, picking a few pieces of parchment off of Bill's desk and giving them a cursory glance-over. Hermione thought she saw the former professor's lips tug upward as if reading something particularly funny, although her expression was tender.

"The students should be here very shortly," McGonagall said very loudly, snapping down the essays on the desk. "There aren't very many, and their teachers have all been advised of the meeting."

Hermione felt more as if she was being talked at than talked to, and didn't know what to say. She grabbed the strap of her bag and tugged it, so that it rubbed against her shoulder and made her shirt scrunch together. Then she realized her nervous action and stopped.

The door opened behind her and she nearly jumped out of shock. A small girl, not even five feet, stood outside the room, staring at Hermione.

"Hello," Hermione said.

The girl stared.

"Ah, Ms. Dampbury, do come in," stated McGonagall from the desk, and the girl stepped inside but didn't close the door. "Take a seat near the front."

The girl hesitated and quickly passed Hermione, as if she were something dangerous, and made her way between the rows of desks. Hermione followed her from a distance, and once the girl had taken a seat in the second row, she passed her and went up to stand next to McGonagall.

"I hope I didn't interrupt anything vital, Ms. Dampbury," McGonagall said, kindly.

"Just flying," said the girl in a small voice. She then blushed and admitted, "I'm not very good at flying."

"Nor was I," Hermione replied, trying to emulate McGonagall's tone but, in her mind, failing. Instead of sounding motherly she just sounded overly nostalgic and disturbingly _old._ "It just takes time."

The girl picked at the wood of the desk and Hermione likewise decided to keep her mouth shut.

The next students to arrive were two boys, who were already deep in discussion as they entered the room, oblivious to the presence of anyone else.

"I'm telling you, my dad says that France got lucky and Brazil will get their just desserts in the next cup," said a blond boy with a small nose and a Gryffindor tie worn askew against his crumpled white shirt.

"Yeah, well I bet your dad also voted for the Tories, didn't he?" snickered the other boy, who wore a green Slytherin patch against his robes and was quite tall for his age.

The Gryffindor wore a blank look.

"My dad works for an MP," the boy explained. "He talks a lot of politics at the dinner table."

Hermione utterly failed to hide her amusement. She thought her companion was equally entertained by the snippet of conversation they'd witnessed, but wasn't surprised when McGonagall curtly cut in, "That will be quite enough, Mr. Helmouth. I would appreciate it if you and Mr. Underwood would escort yourselves to seats at the front of the classroom."

The two boys shared a look but did as the headmistress asked. Hermione was intrigued by how close they already seemed to be, the Gryffindor and the Slytherin, the lion and the snake. It was rare to see a Muggle-born Slytherin, also.

"I asked the Sorting Hat to be a bit more liberal in its determinations this year," McGonagall said in a low voice as a tall heavyset girl found her way into the room. "I'm hoping to avoid some of the violent house rivalry we have so often seen here. I've half a mind to do away with the Sorting entirely, or at least change it."

"The traditionalists won't like that," Hermione murmured.

"The traditionalists should have thought about that before they started a war," McGonagall stated.

Two more boys filed in, a shy Ravenclaw with a round face reminding her of Neville, and a Hufflepuff boy with hair slightly darker than Ron's.

"That was awesome!" he said, addressing McGonagall. "Will we learn how to make a talking cat, Professor?"

"In time, perhaps," was McGonagall's reply. The two boys took seats on opposite sides of the aisle, and the headmistress waved her hand – the door closed. "This, Ms. Granger, is the extent of our first-year Muggle-borns."

Hermione blinked twice and chewed on the inside of her lip to prevent from reacting with an immature snort of disbelief. "Are you quite sure, Headmistress? I surely remember there being more in my year."

"Out of a class of fifty-seven, there were eleven," McGonagall said briskly. "This class has fifty-five students. There are six Muggle-borns. I would also note that your class contained the fewest students of any class in the modern history of Hogwarts, until last year's class, for obvious reasons, and then, this year's student body."

"Wow," she found herself saying. Just like a schoolgirl, she thought furiously. "Well, interesting numbers aside, I believe I am here to speak to you six about being a Muggle-born witch or wizard in the magical world. I myself know much about this, as I am a Muggle-born, and I'm still fairly young, although I feel very old right now."

She smiled good-naturedly and the Gryffindor leaned in to whisper something to the Slytherin.

"Mr. Underwood," McGonagall said warningly.

The Gryffindor leaned back in his chair and looked at Hermione in an expression of rapt attention, although his smirk somewhat belied his intention.

"You are coming into our world at a time of rapid change," Hermione said. "There are many wizards out there who do not believe that you should be at Hogwarts. That's why the wizarding world just had a war, to settle those differences and preserve equality for all witches and wizards. I actually never had the chance to finish my schooling, since I fought in the war. My name is Hermione Granger, and I would have been a seventh-year student last year."

"And probably Head Girl," McGonagall muttered.

"Hermione Granger?" asked the shy Ravenclaw boy. He appeared to be embarrassed when he realized he'd spoken and that everyone's attention was directed toward him. "I… I read about you. In a couple books and the _Daily Prophet."_

"You're a reader?"

"Yes," he replied, half-heartedly, as though he were afraid of someone knowing. Probably the Gryffindor and Slytherin, she mused.

"I was an utter bookworm when I was a student. My friends Harry and Ron would argue that I still am," she said, laughing. "But I was unaware that I'd been in many books, and when I've been in the _Prophet_ it's never been flattering."

"Harry?" piped up the Slytherin. "As in Harry Potter? I hear about him all the time."

"Yes, Harry Potter. He's my best friend, actually, next to Ron Weasley."

"That's awesome!" exclaimed the Hufflepuff. "Didn't he, you know, save the world and all that from Voldemont?"

"Voldemort," she corrected, "and yes, to an extent, although a lot of other people played a part in that."

"Including Hermione herself," continued McGonagall, recognizing Hermione's omission, and Hermione fought to keep herself from blushing. Really, she thought, she was a grown woman, not a silly little girl! It's funny how much more intimidating innocent children were than Ministry officials and Death Eaters.

She spent over an hour talking about her own transition to the wizarding world, and with some prodding by McGonagall elaborated on the shape of the world post-Voldemort. She had to remind herself countless times to simplify, since she was dealing with eleven-year-olds, but they never seemed to falter in following her point, and she grew more impressed with the students by the minute. At the end she took some questions on certain aspects of the Muggle-born experience and on adjusting to the wizarding world (and on living with Harry Potter), and by the time the students filtered out she was sad to see them go. The world of Hogwarts was so much simpler than the world of politics and law that she had entered, although she loved her job.

"I cannot thank you enough for speaking to them today," McGonagall said as Hermione was picking up her bag and throwing it around her shoulder.

"It was no problem, honestly. I enjoyed it."

The strangest expression came over McGonagall's face, and it took Hermione several long moments to realize that it was regret.

"Sometimes," said the headmistress, "I wonder if we have failed some of our Muggle-born students in the past. Students like you. To be honest, I feel quite certain that we failed some of our pure-bloods, too."

"Professor, I know you did your best," Hermione said softly, touching the older woman's shoulder. "You stood up for me when no one else would. There is only so much one person can do."

McGonagall sighed and nodded, and Hermione withdrew her hand. "I suppose you are right. Now, let us see about arranging a Floo out of here…"

She Flooed home and ate lunch, a lonely but necessary affair that took all of thirty minutes. When she finished she curled up in her favorite chair near the window with a Henry James anthology, but she found that she couldn't focus. Over and over a word repeated in her head: "six." It bothered her to no end, and eventually she put down the James book and uncurled herself long enough to find her way over to the dining room counter, where she'd placed the large folder of Remus Lupin's academic collection. She quickly separated out the comprehensive tract and flipped through it to find her bookmark, at a section marked, _"Muggles."_ She flipped back several pages, to where Remus's writing spoke of Muggle-borns and population, and had just begun to read when the fireplace roared to life.

"Hermione? Oh good, you're there." It was Ron. "I know you have most of the day off, and I'm about to take my lunch break. I was wondering if you wanted to join me for a bite? We can go Muggle, even, if you'd like."

Hermione looked back to the stack of papers and suddenly felt very annoyed, as if she had been about to scratch an especially annoying itch but had been stopped at the very last moment. "I'm kind of in the middle of something, Ron. Can it wait thirty minutes?"

"Oh," he said, and she tried not to notice the disappearance of his smile. "Oh, yes, I understand. I'll just take a later lunch. That's fine. I'll Floo back later, if you don't mind."

She nodded, and the flames dissipated. She sat at the counter and began reading, and quite forgot about Ron Weasley and Muggle restaurants.


	5. Magic

"Magic."

-

In July of the year that Harry Potter was to begin his education at Hogwarts (for that was how he had taken to defining time, since the slow and steady march of progress seemed to have no actual application for him anymore), Remus received a letter from Albus Dumbledore requesting his company for tea and possibly a biscuit, if he played his cards right, to be enjoyed on the grounds of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Remus, having no earthly tethers or responsibilities that would make him inclined to decline the invitation, accepted, and on the second-to-last day of July found himself trudging from the Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade to the front gate of Hogwarts.

It had rained the day before, and the ground was muddy, but a painless charm fixed that. His boots were already ragged enough to begin with, and although he'd tried to pick out his most presentable robe, the fact that one of the sleeves was too short was hard to miss for even the most oblivious of bystanders. He'd received a new scar on his face thanks to a recent transformation, but rather than pitying himself and despairing his shabby exterior, he drew comfort from the distant sight of the familiar grounds he had once roamed. Sometime along the way the ghosts had faded, but if he listened very intently, he could just about hear James's laugh.

He had wondered idly on how to pass the outer fence, but this question was rendered moot when he came upon a slightly sweaty Dumbledore at the gates, sleeves rolled up and head pointed to the top of the gate as if looking for something.

"Good afternoon, Headmaster," Remus said. "I hope I'm not interrupting."

Dumbledore for a second didn't seem to hear him, but, without turning, he placed his hands on his hips and replied, "Hello, Remus. I'm sorry – I thought you might be arriving later. As it is, you have caught me in the middle of a particularly draining yet necessary task in the life of a Hogwarts headmaster."

"And what, pray tell, would that be?" asked Remus, genuinely interested in any task that could have the most powerful wizard on the planet sweating and drained.

"Recasting the wards around the school, of course." Dumbledore waved his hand, and Remus thought he felt a flash of magic coming from the gate, but Dumbledore read much more into it and nodded, murmuring, "Yes, of course. That usually is the biggest problem."

"Pardon me for my ignorance, Albus, but I would think that the wards previously cast on the school would prove sufficient."

The headmaster ignored him for a while as he drew three figures in the air with his wand. Though invisible to the naked eye, Remus could feel and began to see their magic, and he vaguely recognized the figures as symbols from an Ancient Runes textbook he had once read.

"They would indeed, but the wards are stronger if continually recast at least once a year, and it has been the tradition and practice of nearly all headmasters to do so," Dumbledore finally responded. He waved his hand and the symbols vanished. "I am actually attempting to change a ward this year, which is why I am so exerted. I shall leave the matter to your imagination, but suffice it to say that the spells placed on Hogwarts throughout the last millennium have been quite complex and occasionally oblique in nature."

"It seems like recasting all the wards would be too much for one man considering the long timeline of the creation of the wards."

"Indeed, and I should say that I misspoke. The correct word would be to 'renew' the wards, not recast them," he answered, and he flicked away some invisible substance that Remus did not notice. "The magic is already provided by the previous casters – headmasters, in this case – but the magic is best preserved if continually renewed. Renewing the wards serves to both strengthen them through the new caster's magic and also to help control them."

He threw his hands in the air and wind began to swirl around the area. Leaves floated up in a circular path and Dumbledore yelled over the din, "Magic is not naturally controlled and confined, and it tends to progress toward entropy if not carefully managed. If I did not renew these wards with my own magic, the wards would draw on the magic of the school and the forest to keep control and stabilize themselves, and that would weaken the entire area, which, incidentally, is the only area in Britain that is actually _growing_ in magical power."

His arms abruptly lowered and the leaves dropped to the ground. He nodded twice and rolled his sleeves back down, finally turning to face Remus.

"Powerful long-term spells should be confined to a certain object," Dumbledore elaborated, and he wiped the sweat from his brow and pocketed his alabaster wand. "The structure of the object maintains the spell, and thus doesn't disrupt the magic around it. Spells are nearly always more powerful than magic in its natural state – they have to be, otherwise they wouldn't be useful – but the magic itself used in the spell becomes less controlled over time, and the spell will call on outside magic to sustain itself. I hope I have not contradicted myself."

"Not at all, Albus," said Remus, grinning, and his eyes roamed the wrought-iron gates, ancient yet imposing. "Magical theory fascinates me, but I confess that I am quite envious of you; I cannot see a quarter of the magic that is so evident to you in your everyday surroundings. I pity the headmaster that must replace you and come face-to-face with those wards."

"There are certain advantages to being old and wily, and cognizance of magic is one of those benefits," said a good-naturedly modest Dumbledore. "In ninety years' time I daresay you shall think my skill elementary in nature. As to the wards – why, my friend, do you think the Headmaster's Office has a portrait of every headmaster and headmistress to gift our school with his or her presence? While just portraits, they are a valuable resource, I assure you." The gate opened behind him and he gestured for Remus to follow. "But enough of old men and ancient magic. It is time for tea."

Tea was held in Hagrid's hut with the friendly old gameskeeper, and Hagrid was doubly cheerful upon seeing Remus on this particular day and had made two entire trays of his famous rock cakes.

"It's a special day," Hagrid explained between sips of something that was decidedly not tea. "Tomorrow's Harry Potter's birthday."

"Yes, I'd been aware," Remus replied. "His eleventh birthday. Soon he'll be at Hogwarts."

"Right," said Hagrid, beaming. "An' Professor Dumbledore here has trusted me ter do all o' the sendin' letters and that business, but the Dursleys aren' replyin', so tonight I'm gonna go fetch him meself. Bring him to Diagon Alley, and maybe get him a wand!"

Remus wasn't sure how he felt about that. On one hand, he hated that someone else beside him got the pleasure of bringing the son of Lily and James Potter into the magical world, that after ten years of waiting he still wouldn't see Harry. On the other hand, it was perfectly natural for Hagrid to be trusted with the task, as Hagrid was actually part of Hogwarts staff.

And there was a smaller part of him, a part of him that _didn't_ want to see Harry, didn't want the memories he'd so carefully repressed and avoided. He didn't want to have to bring Harry into his life, as the people in his life had a nasty habit of dying or going insane or fearing him once they found out what he really was.

He felt Dumbledore's blue eyes on him, the half-moon glasses rested on the headmaster's nose. As if Dumbledore was trying to discern his reaction.

"That's wonderful, Hagrid," he said, and nibbled on a rock cake.

"Have another one," Hagrid said happily, and pushed the tray toward him.

He saw Dumbledore discreetly cast a Softening Charm on one of the cakes and take a cautious bite, before politely setting the cake down and pushing his plate away. "Just delightful, Hagrid."

Hagrid beamed.

Hagrid set to cleaning up the interior of his hut after tea, and the other two found themselves walking up the hill to the school in thoughtful silence. Remus walked with his hands in his pockets, and Dumbledore looked around the area as if still amazed by the beauty of the castle and its surroundings.

"It is time for Harry to join our world, Remus," Dumbledore said as they passed a small pond near a clearing of trees.

"I gathered as much."

"The last ten years have been difficult." Remus opened his mouth to agree, but Dumbledore cut him off. "More difficult than you can imagine, Remus. It has come to my attention that Harry's relatives have not been particularly kind toward him. I realized this, of course, when I left him there, but I had hoped for the better…" He trailed off, and summoned a stone into his hand, flipping it over twice before dropping it near his feet. "But the magic required it, and for that reason I cannot allow myself to overly regret my choice. Petunia Dursley took him in when she did not have to, and it was within her rights to require privacy until it was time for Harry to go to Hogwarts. I'm not entirely sure she was cognizant of the magical contract she had created with her demands, but it worked in her favor, I believe.

"I realize that these ten years have been hard for you as well, and I do think that after tomorrow that clause of the contract will have been fulfilled, and that if you wish to see him, it can be arranged."

Remus continued walking and let the silence speak for him. He kicked the rock Dumbledore had dropped, and after he'd kicked it against a tree spoke.

"I'm leaving for France soon," he said, eyes downward. "I finally got another job working with a private seller outside of Paris. It's a labor-intensive job, but it's better than nothing, and the best I've found since the store burned down."

Dumbledore said nothing for a long while.

"That's good, Remus," came the eventual response, "although I hope you're aware that there are such things as Floo powder and Portkeys."

Remus acted as if his counterpart hadn't said anything.

"Unless, of course, you were afraid to meet your best friend's son. Afraid to serve as a father figure that this boy desperately needs."

"I can't serve as a father figure to him, Albus," Remus growled. "I can't even take care of myself! It's been ten bloody years and I've still not been able to deal with it and put my life back together. I don't have any friends to speak of, and I don't know anything about love or success or most of all happiness. I _want_ to be there for him, I swear I do, Albus, but I don't think I can right now. I'm not right. I've pissed away the last decade and I'm not ready when he needs me."

"Then face your fears and heal," Dumbledore said, facing Remus, eyes fierce. "Take this job, and use your time away to remake yourself as a whole man not torn apart by his bitterness and misfortune. And remember, when your task seems impossible, that there is an eleven-year-old boy who desperately needs guidance."

The wind picked up, and the Whomping Willow snapped its branches across the air in the distance. Remus looked at the entrance, where the familiar knot would lie, and thought he saw a brilliant stag begin to rise from the tunnel, but it was only his mind playing tricks on him.

"Write me," he said. "Take care of him. Let me know that he's all right."

"I can do that," Dumbledore replied. "But the fact remains that one day you must face him and let him know you. You underestimate yourself, Remus, and you underestimate the ability this boy could have to heal you."

Remus gazed upward. He considered the sky and his twisted life and said, "All right," and he and the headmaster continued their trek up to the school he'd once called home.

The next day, on Harry Potter's birthday, Remus did not go to fetch his quite-nearly-godson, although a large part of him would have liked to. For a glorious ten minutes, after he had just woken up and thrown off his ratty covers and was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, he was convinced that he was healed, suddenly and without prejudice, and that he had accepted James and Lily and Peter's deaths and more importantly, Sirius's betrayal. He dreamed that he could go talk to Harry without seeing his father's face or his mother's smile, and that maybe he could give Harry the guidance James would want his friend to provide.

Then he heard Sirius's laugh in his head and he rolled back over and faced his pillow and began to weep.

After lunch he dragged himself into the Ministry of Magic. He would require a visa for his job in France, and his status as a dark creature made the process incredibly more difficult than it already was (and that was saying something). His representative in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures was refreshingly nice and charismatic, a woman in her thirties by the name of Darcy Bentham, and he had the feeling she was quite taken with him. She smiled as she helped him fill out the necessary paperwork, and he saw that she wore a modest amount of makeup, unlike some of the other thirty-year-old women he had known.

She led him through the halls to one of the other rooms to deliver the papers, and she had to speak loudly to be heard over the sound of thunder and pouring rain conjured by the windows next to them.

"Maintenance workers want a pay raise," she explained, laughing. "It's been storming for two weeks now."

"Impressive magic, that," he said, and though he'd seen it before, the storm made the display just that more imposing. He saw a wizard down below waving his wand in all sorts of complex motions, and the rain lightened. He was reminded of Dumbledore's actions on the wards of Hogwarts. "How long have those windows been there?"

"At least seventy years, I'd say."

"Do they recast the spells every once in a while?"

"Oh Merlin, I don't know," she said as she pushed open yet another door with seemingly no purpose but to slow people down. A memo flew near her head, and she grabbed it out of the air without reading it. "I imagine not. It's tricky magic, and it would be quite a bit of work to recast it continuously. There aren't really any Ministry requirements for recasting spells, since most spells hold up far longer than they need to anyway."

He thought about Dumbledore's words on the necessity of renewing spells and wards and was distracted the rest of the day, and was even distracted when Darcy Bentham asked him on a date, which was a pity because she was rather pretty and he felt like a fool afterwards.

When he returned to his dingy flat he went straight for his bag and retrieved his long-neglected papers, and spent the entirety of his non-date reading them over and pondering the nature of magic.

He skimmed through his collection of books regarding magical theory but could only find paragraphs regarding the topic he had in mind, and none were much help. He found some text reinforcing what Dumbledore had said to him about spells and magic, but the headmaster's explanation had been infuriatingly complete, and even that text was largely useless.

He sat down to write through his ideas. He spent an hour scribbling out sentences and then crossing them out, but after a long while sitting and thinking and scribbling he came out with something workable:

_When I first broached this subject, I assumed that environmental magic levels had gone through the roof across Britain, and that this change had had a tremendous impact on Muggles. I still believe that part of this explanation is true, for reasons already discussed, but while my data at the time of this draft is minimal, there is a certain use to a well-done thought experiment, and such will follow._

_Magic, as best we understand it, is an extremely volatile and proportionally powerful form of energy beyond the understanding of most humans. As we know due to the basic law of the conservation of energy, energy, even magic, cannot be created nor destroyed. A system that is not in equilibrium will increasingly tend towards entropy._

_Magic is our energy and spells are our systems. A well-cast spell provides a stable system that controls and amplifies magic, which naturally wants to disperse, and there is no negative effect, as the magic being used is the caster's magic, which will be replenished through the intake of food, water, and the like (a conversion of energy, as basically understood). In the event of the caster's death, the spell will wear off, and the controlled magic will disperse back into the environment, returning the energy the user took in from eating, drinking, etc._

_Certain spells are not meant to wear off with the caster's death. Protective wards, for instance, and long-term spells commonly placed on structures or areas, such as Hogwarts or the Ministry of Magic, or even Quidditch sites. Instead, these spells create a much stronger system that outlasts its caster (and are subsequently much more draining to cast). In the event of the caster's death, the magic contained by the system will be controlled for a long while, but the system will begin to weaken, and as a result there will be magical leakage – the caster's original magic will leak into the environment as the structure of the spell deteriorates. Magic, contained for so long, tends to disperse and leave the immediate area until it encounters another area with a large amount of magical energy, a tendency ascribed to the theoretical gravity of magic._

_Once the magic has leaked and left the area of the spell, the spell must use environmental magic to sustain itself, an effort that is not easily completed and that requires more and more magic to work as time goes on and the structure of the spell system further deteriorates. Essentially, the prevalence of long-term spells and wards throughout Britain – "old magic" – contributes to the lowered amounts of environmental magic throughout the islands._

_It may seem that the overall amount of magic in the environment would remain the same, and this is true, so perhaps my previous remarks have been somewhat disingenuous. While the amount of magic remains the same, the amount of _significant_ magic is greatly affected by our so-called old magic spells. Old magic forces magic to disperse and discourages the natural buildup and gravity of magic – as more and more old magic is used and more and more magic disperses, there are less and less significant areas of magic throughout Britain, and thus the gravity of magic is greatly decreased. This means that an increasing proportion of the magic throughout Britain is dispersed, low-concentration magic; what we shall call "lost magic," for that is essentially what it is. Lost magic is essentially insignificant, as the levels of magic in the environment are too small to be of any importance to the magical development of society._

_According to Stalk's figures, the Muggle-born fertility rate is much higher in magical "hubs" of activity than in areas that have not known magic, and this tells us that the presence of magic in the environment is necessary for the continued prevalence of magic in human reproduction. While it's clear genetics plays some role in the Muggle-born process, Stalk's figures prove that there is an environmental factor that cannot be denied._

_If we assume the theories about old magic to be true, and that as old magic increases lost magic also necessarily increases, then it is clear that old magic could (and probably does) help lead to the lowered numbers of Muggle-borns over the last two centuries. (It is interesting to note that by most estimates, long-term spells and wards have increased threefold since 1800 – see Stalk's figures and Waffling's _Treatise on the Structures of Magic_.)_

_It is also important to note that areas of highly concentrated magic, these magical hubs, are the areas where long-term spells and old magic are most common. This helps contribute to the lowered gravity of magic. For example, if old magic was common in London, one hub, and uncommon in Wales, another hub, then it would make sense that the magic dispelled from London might be attracted to the mass of magic in Wales and while London's magical preeminence would decline, Wales's magical power would increase. This is not the case. Magic is leaking out of both hubs in this scenario, and as a result is gravitated toward neither hub, and instead aimlessly drifts, serving no use and inspiring no magic in the human population._

_There is an answer, however, a logical answer that is easy and simple and could help solve the dispersal of magic. I recently visited the Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Albus Dumbledore, (Order of Merlin First Class, Supreme Mugwump, etc), and witnessed him renewing the wards around Hogwarts – wards originally cast by the Founders of the school a millennium ago. By the simple act of renewing the wards on a yearly basis, the headmasters of Hogwarts have kept the structures of the spells first cast centuries ago strong and firm, and thus the amount of magical leakage (hypothetically speaking) can be said to be minimal at worst; perhaps this is why Hogwarts is the only area in Britain that is actually _growing_ in magical power, as Headmaster Dumbledore himself can attest._

His hand ached, and so he stopped. He also recognized that he was venturing into areas with which he was not fully comfortable, and in fact most of what he had written was conjecture. It was logical conjecture, and he was fairly certain of the accuracy of what he was written, but nonetheless it was conjecture.

It occurred to him immediately what he should do, and he quickly got over his embarrassment at asking for help when he realized how much he needed the assistance. Grabbing another piece of parchment, he took up his quill, ignoring the ache between his thumb and index finger, and scrawled out:

_Dear Albus,_

_Hope you are well. I must say I was fascinated by our conversation yesterday on the nature of the wards, as it ties into something I have been following about out of academic curiosity for some time now. This is not my area of expertise however, and while I have written out some basic theories on how this information contributes to the nature of magic in Britain and the effect of magic on our population, I would appreciate a wiser set of eyes._

_I do not know if you have the time for such a trivial matter, but if you could refer me to someone with knowledge in the area I would appreciate it, as my resources are limited. The tract is attached._

He paused, and then continued:

_Also, if you have heard from Hagrid about Harry's condition and happiness, and how his birthday was, I would love to hear any information. Give Hagrid and Minerva my best wishes._

_Remus._

He stuck his hastily-written theories on the back of the letter and went down to the nearest wizarding post office to post his letter. He chose a rather scrawny grey owl, as it was considerably cheaper than the horned owl that had stared at him when he walked through the door, and the runt took his letter with a grateful hoot and rather haphazardly fluttered out through the open sunroof.

The next two days he spent packing his things (a job that, admittedly, had not taken very long) and taking care of the rest of his affairs that had needed tending to before his departure for Paris. After dinner on the second of August, a large barn owl that Remus recognized as belonging to Hogwart's Owlery tapped at his window, and he let the owl in and took the envelope in its talons. It flew off, content with its performance, and he opened the envelope and set the several pages within on his desk.

_Remus,_

_I must say I was pleasantly surprised to see this letter for multiple reasons, one of which being the fact that you have pursued an area of academic interest to us both. I read your draft, and while it is quite clearly a rough draft, I will say that you are touching on subjects that I have often pondered, and that our theories are not dissimilar, although I greatly admire that you are actually doing your due diligence and attempting to verify your suspicions._

_I pride myself on keeping up with the science of the times, but I confess that one of my colleagues tends to be dreadfully bored at this time of year and also is much more involved with the theory of magic than I been since I was a sprightly lad of seventy. As a result, I asked him to look at the paper, as well, and he most kindly shared his thoughts, which I have enclosed within._

_To answer your other and more vital question, Hagrid reports that Harry is doing well, and has received his wand and an owl named Hedwig, along with his other materials. The Dursleys have disappointed me, but while Harry has been neglected, I am at the least happy that his spirit still seems to be strong and innocent, although this does little to assuage my guilt. I hope you do not loathe me too much for my apparently callous treatment of the boy, but unfortunately this step was necessary for his protection. I can only hope that when he is at Hogwarts the damage done to him can be undone, and that friendship and love will build him up where he has been restrained._

_Best of luck in France. Minerva says hello and that she will Transfigure you into a sheep if you don't write her soon, and several other less polite things that I'm sure she can purvey to you in a letter._

_Albus._

Remus's grin turned into a frown when he read of Harry's treatment at the hand of the Dursleys, and a terrible wave of guilt washed over him. He should have been there…

But those choices had been made, and even if he had been ready to be there he wouldn't have been able to. And that was what he was doing now. Getting ready to be there for Harry.

He began to read the other two pages.

_I must say that it is exceedingly clear that the paper is a rough draft and hastily written, but beyond that I cannot overly object to it, as many of the ideas contained within it are sound and in accordance with the theory of magic as I know it, and also several other papers I have read touching similar topics. I admit that I am curious to read the rest of the work, as it hints at other areas that are of interest to me, but that is for another time._

_The concept of "old magic," "lost magic," and "magical hubs" has been documented by several obscure theorists, and generally their conclusions have been in accordance with your friend Mr. Naughton's_ - Remus grinned at Albus's chosen pseudonym for him – _ideas._

_Of more import to me is the brief aside on Hogwarts. I would also point out to Mr. Naughton the importance of magical creatures, not just humans. The Forbidden Forest is one of the strongest natural strongholds of magic in Europe, and its strength contributes to the strength of the entire area. The dispersal of magic is being rushed by the destruction of our magical natural habitats, and necessarily vice versa. In addition, Hogwart's wards are also (as I feel you must have forgotten) strengthened by the donation of three of the Founders' magic to the soil of Hogwarts, which has provided an extremely strong magical core for the area that has attracted more and more "lost magic" throughout the last ten centuries._

_While there are two somewhat amateurish references to Stalk and Waffling, I have included an attached list of more detailed references that would help improve the quality of the tract. Many of them are Arithmancical in nature and deal with the mathematics and actual data supporting Naughton's ideas, and have been compiled over the last four centuries. I hope you will pass the list along to him._

_Severus Snape._

Remus was taken by surprise when he read who had written the response, but for some reason it only added to his sudden glee. Not only had his ideas been tentatively verified by two extremely capable wizards, but one of them had a personal vendetta against him, further increasing the validity of his claims! And the list Snape had written out seemed quite complete and would undoubtedly help, if he could get his hands on the books.

His joy evaporated when he remembered Harry. Harry, whose relatives didn't want him. Harry, whose last link to his parents was too cowardly to approach him, whose (for all practical purposes) true uncle still hadn't dealt with the events of a day ten years prior.

He set the papers to the side and collapsed in a chair with a glass of water. He cleared his mind of childish things and forced himself to think of Lily and James and Peter. He forced himself to think of Sirius – to heal.

For Harry.

-

In the largest room on the first floor of the Ministry of Magic the Ministry's brightest legal minds sat at a large round table to discuss the role of the Ministry in the future and the proper form of government required by the people of wizarding Britain. The group had been called on specifically to provide solutions and insight; somewhat predictably, nothing had been solved and most of what was said was either a personal attack or a reference to an arcane rule of conduct.

"The idea of some elitist oligarchy is laughable," Tiberius Ogden was saying loudly when Hermione caught herself falling asleep in her seat. "We didn't fight a damned war just so we'd go back to our old ways, did we? Are we going to invite the Malfoys and Lestranges to take back their old places, too? People won't stand for this nonsense."

"Not an elitist oligarchy," argued Trevor Gamp, "but an enlightened legislative body that elects the executive branch. Organizing such wide elections when the magical population is so scarce would be incredibly difficult, and an enlightened body that knows the issues well would do a better job of maintaining a stable government."

"Has it occurred to anyone that we just had an oligarchy?" asked Yarbet, who looked nearly as bored as Hermione. "Yes, now I remember – that turned out great, didn't it?"

She had long prided herself on her resolute focus, whether it was during one of Binns's lessons or using her limited time to finish her massive amounts of homework during her O.W.L. year while organizing an illegal defense club, but this meeting had been too much. Five hours, and they had repeated the same arguments ten times or more.

Mr. Weasley snored next to her. She considered waking him up but got the better of her envy and didn't.

Ernie Macmillan's father Eustace was comparing the poet Homer to Kingsley (she didn't understand the allusion, but apparently Homer was an ancestor of the Macmillans) when a memo floated past her shoulder and nudged her face. Glad for any distraction, she grabbed it out of the air and opened it on the table in front of her.

_Bored yet?_

The note was unsigned, but she recognized the handwriting. She was about to conjure up her own memo when new words wrote themselves in quickly drying ink across the page.

_Look up and left._

She did. The room was a high-ceilinged one, with enchanted windows showing the weather to the right and to the left, windows that looked out onto the top two floors of the Ministry. On the second floor, leaning against the railing with his head near the glass, Harry stood, and when Hermione found him he waved.

_Protean Charm,_ the memo said. _You looked bored._

_Yes, I guess you could say that,_ she conceded.

Percy Weasley had begun on one of his rants. While she still didn't quite like him, he had her respect, but he was still prone to thinking that everyone else in the room was interested in listening to him ramble.

_Hermione Granger, bored and not paying attention? Rita Skeeter would have a field day with this._

She made sure that he saw her glare before replying, _I've been her__e__ for hours on end and we've made no progress. I think I can be spared on this one occasion._

_Fair enough. I'm done for the day – d'you think you'll be done in time for dinner? Ron and I were going to hit up a Muggle restaurant near Picadilly, supposed to have delicious veal._

_Can't,_ she wrote, and on paper it seemed especially terse. _Even if this lets out relatively soon I need to speak to Kingsley afterwards._

_Okay. You should probably talk to Ron after you're done. Good luck with the legal hounds._

She saw him pocket his paper and wave to her. She nodded back, and turned her head back to the discussion without watching him leave.

"I must say that studies done in Bangledesh were positively exultant about the possibility of a semi-democratic oligarchy," Percy was saying. "This was, of course, before the crises across the Eastern seas…"

Hermione straightened up in her chair and did her best to open her eyes wide but knew it was a lost battle from the beginning.

They argued for several hours more, with a break for coffee and tea. Yarbet was snidely lambasting one of the Wizengamot lackies when the doors to the room opened and Kingsley stood before them, like the Camerlango retrieving cardinals from conclave. His expression was fierce and assertive, and he announced in a loud voice, "We are done for the day. Was there any progress?"

Murmurs broke out for a short period of time, and suddenly the whole room was alive with shouts and yells, everyone trying to get their say in with the Minister. Kingsley held up a hand and the chaos ended.

"I assume that means no," he said, and it was hard to tell whether he meant it humorously or not. "This session is done. I thank you all for your time, and in the future several of you may be called for further discussion on this matter. For the time being, we're done."

The scraping of chairs and buzz of muttering filled the room as the brightest minds in magical Britain (or so they thought) were dismissed. For her part, Hermione stayed in her seat, ignoring her aching muscles, and watched. She watched Kingsley sweep through the room, addressing concerns with a serious face and joking with the more light-hearted members of the congregation. He was a far cry from the nearly emotionless Auror she'd once known; he was well-suited for his office, and uniquely determined not to follow in the paths of his predecessors.

When most of the room had cleared out, she grabbed her papers, stuffed them in her bag, and rose from her seat. Kingsley, after bidding Percy farewell, approached her, sighing.

"Doesn't sound like a very good meeting, does it?" he asked. "I don't think one person here honestly thought we got anything productive done."

"That's because we didn't," said Hermione pointedly. "You can't throw thirty people with vastly different ideologies and personal agendas and expect them to agree with each other at the end of the day."

"Of course not. That being said, the day will turn out to be useful in the long run, I think."

"How so?"

"Well, I presume you paid attention throughout." Hermione hid her blush, and Kingsley was caught between a smirk and a sigh. "I presume you paid more attention than anyone else, at any rate. Would it be out of the realm of possibilities to provide a summary of the views of most members of the panel?"

"That I can do," she said, relieved.

"Good. There's obviously going to be no compromise, so in the next few weeks I want us to start building our coalition. We're aiming for a democratic republic, most likely in the vein of Muggle England or the United States. The difference I'm flexible on. We can start consolidating our support among those who we think want that kind of government and also the moderates who might be amenable to it, and hopefully once we've got a strong enough coalition we'll have the political capital to make small concessions to the opposition to convince them to hop on board and avoid a drawn-out battle."

"I… I wasn't aware that was your motive for scheduling the meeting today," Hermione finally said, taken aback at Kingsley's uncompromisingly political response. "I don't know whether to be intimidated or impressed."

"I'd advise you to get over it either way," said Kingsley. "You're my go-to person on this, and I need you to be intelligently aggressive. We can't back down now. We've got a golden opportunity, and I refuse to see it wasted." He hinted at a grin. "And you have to admit, that _was_ rather cunning if I do say so myself."

"Yes, yes, definitely…" He began walking and didn't bother asking her to do the same, but she did anyway, and he didn't seem to mind. "I wanted to ask something else, though. I was wondering if you could get me clearance to talk with an Unspeakable."

"For what purpose?"

"I'm reading something – written by Remus Lupin, coincidentally, and I've been trying to follow some of his leads," she elaborated as they passed through another hall. "I just noticed that at certain points the path ends. There are questions about Muggle-born population numbers – which are plummeting, by the way – and also magic's impact on Muggles, and all this very important stuff, but there's not much academia on it. I want to see what the Department of Mysteries has to say on it."

"I personally don't see that as being of special importance, and anything that is not of special importance at this point in time is frivolous," Kingsley stated bluntly. "I want you focused on drafting a constitution that will both be popular and enduring, and once we've got that miracle done then I'll gladly sign off on whatever this request is, unless I've been booted out of office by then. Talk to me then."

Hermione knew better than to argue, and instead said, "Yes, Minister," and pretended as if she were singularly focused on the task at hand. Kingsley didn't seem to notice or care about her hesitance and the issue was considered dead.

She had reached the Atrium and was about to Floo to her flat when she tripped over a stray umbrella and was sent sprawling across the floor. Her knee ached, but her main injury seemed to be her pride – several onlookers gaggled at her, and she thought she heard a chuckle – and she got to her feet, glaring at the umbrella (where had _that_ come from, anyway?). She bent over to pick up her bag and noticed the page on which she and Harry had held their Protean conversation.

_Okay. You should probably talk to Ron after you're done. Good luck with the legal hounds._

She frowned and slung her bag across her shoulder, pocketing the piece of paper. Grabbing a handful of powder from the jug atop the mantel, she tossed it into the fire, waited a second, and then stepped in, announcing her destination.

She felt the wards bend as she stepped out of the next fireplace and into the flat. It was considerably cleaner than it had been the last time she had visited, with the exception of two hampers of dirty clothes that rested near the rubbish bin. Harry was reading a Muggle newspaper and Ron was watching an Aston Villa friendly, and neither appeared fazed by her entrance.

"Evening," said Harry genially over the top of his paper. "How'd the meeting from hell go?"

"Nowhere," she replied. She thought about setting her bag down but decided against it. "It was nothing but a waste of time. How was dinner?"

"Brilliant," said Ron without enthusiasm. "We invited Ernie and Neville to go along with us and Ernie treated us all to the top ten reasons why Ernie Macmillan is better than the average Hufflepuff. Grand stuff. Neville left halfway through, said he was sick. Don't blame him – I was getting pretty nauseous having to listen to that twerp, too."

"I'm sorry," she said, feeling guilty.

"Don't worry about it," said Ron, unconvincingly.

Harry seemed to recognize the pregnant pause before it hit and stood suddenly, grasping his newspaper and sticking his feet in his trainers, haphazardly fighting with the back lip. "Well, I think I'm going to go down the convenience store and get a nice iced drink and a churro. Anyone want something?"

"I'm fine," grunted Ron.

"Same," said Hermione.

"Right, I'll just be a few minutes," said Harry, nodding, and Hermione caught the significant glance he pointed in his red-headed friend's direction before he traipsed over to the front hall. The door slammed shut behind him and Ron and Hermione were left alone.

"How was business today?" she asked.

"Fine," he said. "You can sit down if you want."

She did.

"We sold some more of those new dream potions," he said. "They're really flying off the shelves. George is thinking about hiring some more help. He's going to send a letter to Slughorn asking for some references."

"That's great."

"Bloody exciting, isn't it?" His lips had twisted into a distinctly Weasley sneer, and Hermione saw the interior of a tent flash inside her eyelids, heard the sound of the fight, remembered the taste of tears as her best friend was too tired and confused to know to comfort her. And then she knew what was coming before it happened. "I'd ask what's happening with you, but I probably won't understand it, and you probably don't want to talk about work. You spend enough time with it as it is."

She recognized the last comment for what it was, and answered, "My work is important, Ron. Kingsley needs me."

"Of course he does," said Ron. "I'm not saying he doesn't. Kingsley is a nice bloke and all; a bit serious, but when he loosens up I right like him. I'm just wondering… it used to be Harry first. All the time. I understand most of it now – I mean, the guy had a freaking mass murderer after his head, and I was too stupid to really be any help – but even when it wasn't Voldemort or Umbridge or whatever you chose him. And I understand why you choose Kingsley now, but you're choosing him every time, and after a while that gets pretty irritating. I'd just like to be first for once."

"You _will_ be first, Ron," Hermione replied, and she fought to keep her tone from being overly combative or desperate. "It's just a wild time right now, for me and for the entire wizarding world. I had to skip my final year at Hogwarts – again! – for this. Soon it'll be over, and then I can get back to focusing on my friends and family and you."

"It's never going to be like that, Hermione. You thought it would be after Voldemort went in the cooker, but it wasn't. After Voldemort came your parents – which I'm not blaming you for, just saying – and then after your parents came the Ministry and after the Ministry it'll be something else. Do you remember," he said, and his voice cracked, "back when you said Harry had a 'saving-people thing?'"

She did. It hurt to think about. She'd regretted her words ever since.

"I think you may have the same thing," he continued. "Not like Harry, but you've always got to be saving the world, whether it's Harry or house elves or the Ministry. That's never going to change. You always will think that it will, but it won't. That's just part of you, and that's one of the reasons I like you so much, but it's impossible to deal with after a while."

"What do you suggest?" she retorted, and Ron flinched. She took a deep breath and sat back in her chair – she'd nearly edged out of it. "I mean, what can I do to be better about this?"

"Take two days off," he said simply. "Take two days off and spend them with me. Spend them with Harry, too. He misses you as much as I do, although he'll never blame you for it. Do you honestly have anything going on in the next two days that you can't bear to miss?"

"I'd love to, but I can't – there's a conference tomorrow that Kingsley will be speaking at and I'll be introducing him, and then on Friday I'm meeting with the Prime Minister to discuss an economic package for rebuilding the Ministry…" She stopped, and grabbed his hand. "Another two days, Ron. I know I can do this. I just need to give Kingsley a week's notice so he can prepare; I've got Saturday mostly off, anyway, and Sunday entirely off… I'm sure we can work something out –"

"No, I really don't think we can," Ron cut her off, his tone cold and his hand colder as he removed it from hers. "I knew you'd say that. I _knew_ you'd bloody well say that. I'm trying my best, Hermione, but I really don't think you're committed. You like the idea of a relationship, but not the actual practice, since it interferes with your plans for saving the world."

She brushed off the sting of his last remark (the old Hermione would have given him a good tongue lashing for that) and grabbed his hand again, more tightly. "I know I've been aloof, Ron, but we can do this. I _do_ care about you, more than you know."

"Take two days off," he said.

"I care about you, Ron, I really do…"

"Prove it."

In retrospect, Hermione would have chosen anything else than what she ended up saying, but at the time it seemed like a good idea. There was a lack of intimacy in their relationship, and that seemed to be the main problem, caused by her dedication to her work and her growing coldness toward her boyfriend. And Ron was most definitely a boy, and that settled it. It seemed so simple when she said it.

"I'll show it to you," she said. "I want to take the next step in our relationship. I think we should have sex."

Something flashed in his eyes, and she was sure that she'd pulled a rabbit out of a hat, drawn her trump card, that she'd saved the day at the last moment – but then he withdrew his hand, _again,_ and stood.

"It's not about goddamn sex, Hermione," he muttered. Her heart nearly broke at the miserable expression on his face. "I just miss you, is all."

She didn't know what to say. She'd been so _sure_, and then she was left with nothing. "Ron, please…"

"I understand," he pressed on, stepping away from the sofa. Aston Villa scored and he showed no emotion, and Hermione knew she'd screwed up royally. "I'm not blaming you, really… I understand and I respect your choice, but I need to deal with it. I told George I might take a week's holiday next week to take Charlie up on an offer to visit him in Romania, and I think I'm going to utilize that vacation time. We can talk when I get back."

Hermione sat, stunned, and didn't respond when he bit his lip, grabbed his coat, and left the flat. She set her bag on the floor and rubbed her cheeks with her palms. Her eyes hurt. Her head hurt. She was not going to cry.

"Hermione?"

Harry's voice lilted through the room and she remembered the tent. She remembered how he had let her cry to herself, too caught up in his own issues and too intimidated by her shows of emotion to comfort her.

But the war had changed Harry, had made him into a man in more ways than one, and this new and improved Harry gently pulled her to the sofa and let her lay her head against his shoulder, arms wrapped around her like the track of the helter-skelter her mother had taken her on when she was little. He whispered comforting words to her, and sometimes they were awkward, but he was trying, and it felt both nice and terrifying to be so open and raw and to depend on someone else for the first time since May.

She didn't see either of her boys on Thursday or Friday, due to her previously stated commitments, and Ron left on Saturday. After she finished processing several warrant requests, she went back to her flat and tried to sleep but failed. She was roused out of her lethargy by Harry, who she knew had just returned from dropping Ron off at the Portkey hub but was too kind to say so. He pulled her out of her bed, forcibly yanked a fleece jacket over her pyjama top, and dragged her to an Italian restaurant where they sat near the window and Harry told her endless stories he'd heard from so and so to better her mood, and while it didn't help much she sincerely appreciated the sentiment and let him know at the end of the meal. On Sunday she curled up with a book to read, and at noon Harry arrived at her flat, still dressed in his pyjamas, with his newspaper and Quidditch magazines, and read in silence with her, sharing the loneliness of her flat and the emptiness of life without Ron.

On Monday she returned to work, and work was still work and Kingsley was still Kingsley and Ron was still in Romania. On Tuesday she brought up the idea of the Unspeakable again with Kingsley and again he shot it down, and for the rest of the week she divided her time between focusing on her work and feeling guilty for making Harry take care of her. She'd given up on the issue when Kingsley himself brought it up on Thursday.

"I'd like you to stay a moment, Granger," he'd said during the interdepartmental meeting, and she'd obeyed. When Yarbet and Percy left, she stayed in her seat, and she noted how utterly tired Kingsley appeared, as if he hadn't slept in days. "It's about those Muggle-born numbers you were asking me about. The Census Office has been working overtime the last couple months on getting some figures –" Hermione distinctly remembered the Census employee visiting her flat in July and nodded "– and you were right about the Muggle-borns being unusually low. Across the board, especially five and under, and then fifteen years before that during your generation. Some other numbers were disturbing, too; it's all preliminary, but there were some interesting figures involving Muggles.

"I'm worried," he admitted. "Again, it's all preliminary, but it doesn't look good, and it could be a serious problem going forward. You say you've got some theories?"

"Yes," she answered.

"Good. I've talked to the Department of Mysteries, and you're free to question one of their Unspeakables at your leisure." He smiled wearily and winked at her. "I guess I underestimated your stubbornness."

"Kingsley, thank you –"

"Don't mention it," he replied, waving her off. "After all, it's just more work for you in the end, isn't it?"

She knew Kingsley was joking, but the truth of the statement broke through to her, and she couldn't force herself to forget it. She thought about it in her flat, alone, and waited on Harry to come but he didn't this time, and it hurt when she knew she had no right to blame Harry for anything.

_I just miss you, is all._

When Harry found her she was asleep and shivering on the sofa, and the next day when she woke up it didn't occur to her to question how she'd ended up in bed with her pyjamas on.


	6. Antimagic

"Antimagic."

-

_Heaven. Hell. Karma. Rebirth._

_The idea of reward and retribution is ingrained into both Western and Eastern philosophy and religion, to the point that the inherent justice of the world is almost universally accepted, although endlessly questioned. While life itself isn't always fair, in the end everything balances out, or at least pretends to do so. Fate is an equal-sums game._

_What, we must ask ourselves, is the sum of our ignorance? The sum of our violence? Of our hatred?_

_We have spoken to our world, changed it, and now we must ask ourselves: how will it change us? If we have abused magic, what shall be our punishment? Can the oppressed rise up and defeat the oppressor?_

_Has magic begun to fight back?_

_-_

"Salt, Severus?"

Snape still refused to look at him, except to deliver a hate-filled glare, but he passed the salt. He had learned to relish his small victories, and accepted it without trying for further conversation.

The hall was half-filled with students; the other half, he expected, were enjoying the benefits of a beautiful April day outside and planned on a later lunch. At the Gryffindor table he found Harry and Ron sitting together, talking with Fred and George, and Hermione sitting a ways away from them. He pursed his lips and thought for a moment to speak to Harry and Ron about their treatment of their friend, but decided it wouldn't do any good.

It had been the full moon two days prior, and he was just beginning to overcome his usual illness. As a result, he was constantly famished, and he'd already been through two helpings of his meal. After the third, he wiped his mouth with his napkin, excused himself to Flitwick and McGonagall, and exited the hall. On his way out he heard Harry and Ron whispering excitedly about the Firebolt and Quidditch; Hermione sat with her nose in a book, and Ginny Weasley was trying to convince Colin Creevey to stop taking photos of something or other. He saw himself, twenty years younger, sitting at the same table, but the ghosts were but mere wisps on this occasion, and he smiled.

His classroom was in a slight state of disrepair – he'd had dueling practices with the N.E.W.T. seventh-years for the morning session – and he set to fixing it with a lazy display of magic. His third-year Ravenclaws and Gryffindors were due in for the first afternoon class, and he'd just put the last desk back together when Padma and Parvati Patil entered the classroom, speaking in hushed tones. He waved to the girls, and took a seat at his desk, watching the students file in.

Harry and Ron entered with Seamus and Dean, and Neville talked at Hermione as they found their seats together, although the girl probably wouldn't have been able to tell anyone else whatever it was that the Longbottom boy had been talking about, as her eyes were fixed on her estranged best friends. Remus sighed and looked at Harry, who stared resolutely back; he flinched, startled, and for two long moments thought that he was staring at James. But then he found the emerald green and remembered that this was a thirteen-year-old boy, a thirteen-year-old boy who was waiting for his Defense lesson to start and who was too immature to make amends with the person who cared most about him in the world.

"All right, today we're going to be going over your upcoming vampire assignment…"

While the effect her fight with her friends was having on Hermione was obvious – in addition to her _other_ responsibilities (he still didn't agree with Minerva on that allowance) – she didn't show it during class, and she was first to answer nearly all of his questions. He thought Harry had the decency to look guilty every once in a while, and he even caught Ron with a flushed face halfway during the lesson, but Hermione kept her usual expression of stoic determination, and the class went on.

"One last thing," he said, after the class had begun packing up their materials. "When you see me next, I want you all to have the Odorous Incantation mastered. It may seem trifling, but if you ever encounter a vampire it will buy you precious seconds that could save your life."

"Where are we supposed to practice an Odorous Incantation?" Lavender Brown complained. "I don't want our dormitory smelling like garlic."

"Don't have to use the dormitories, do you?" remarked Ron, to Harry more than to Lavender. "There's only a hundred-odd empty classrooms around here. Just find one of the ninety-nine that Percy isn't snogging his girlfriend in and we're set."

Lavender scowled at Ron, but Ron didn't seem to notice or care. Hermione was the first one out of the classroom, and he caught her looking back at the two with hazy eyes and a lip scraped with bite marks. Then she pushed out of the classroom, and Ron and Harry made sure to put some distance between them before they exited as well.

Remus sat on top of his desk and chewed on the end of his quill, a nasty habit he'd never quite broken. He remembered a different student at Hogwarts who had made a very similar remark to Ron's… a quite different best friend of the last Potter descendant…

_I never knew there were so many empty classrooms in the school. _

That had been the hardest part about coming back. It was his luck, wasn't it, that when he finally was ready to face his past, that when he finally was ready to be there for Harry, that his traitorous bastard of a former best friend had reared his ugly head and decided to break out of prison so he could finish his treachery and return to his lord. Moments like these, when the ghosts returned, were the moments he'd been afraid of, and there was no potion to make these shivers go away.

"Professor Lupin? Am I interrupting?"

He opened eyes he never realized had been shut. Luna Lovegood, an eccentric but cute blonde second-year, was standing in the doorway. "Of course not, Luna. Come in. I was just thinking."

"Thinking can be a dangerous business, Professor," Luna said seriously as she set her bag down on a desk in the back. "I've been thinking about what I should get my daddy for his birthday next week, and I think that some of my ideas would be quite silly to try to implement. What do you get your daddy for his birthday? Something safe, I think."

"I don't get my dad anything for his birthday," he said. "He's dead. Both my parents are."

"That's very sad, Professor. My mummy died, too," responded Luna. "She had some ideas and ended up killed by a spell gone wrong. Like I said, thinking can be dangerous, especially when wrackspurts are around."

He knew better than to ask what a wrackspurt was and instead asked her about her homework assignment, and as a Ravenclaw she was more than happy to talk about academics.

The shivers never really left him until after he'd resigned and after he'd found out about the true nature of Sirius Black. It pained him, nearly killed him, to know that Peter, whom he'd lionized over the past twelve years, had been a murdering traitor, but to have Sirius – the bravest, most loyal person he'd ever known – confirmed as just that was reaffirming for him on some basic level. Sirius dropped him a note, a week after the events at Hogwarts, found against his window in his motel room in London.

_Moony,_

_I'm glad we got to catch up and clear up any past misunderstandings. It's been too long, my friend._

_I heard you resigned, being the idiotically noble prat that you are, but I understand. I wish you'd stuck around to keep an eye on Harry, but maybe that position really is cursed, and I think he'll be in good hands. Albus wouldn't let any harm come to him._

_Please write me back. It may take a while for me to respond – my steed (did you know he likes to cuddle? It's positively frightening) and I are going to be incognito for a while, and we're probably going to have enough trouble eating, let alone writing letters. We're particularly interested in hunting rats, but they have been scarce so far._

_Beaky says hello._

_Padfoot._

He had folded the note in half, smiled, and happily watched it as it burned. It wouldn't do to leave correspondence from supposed mass murderers lying around the flat, especially when half the wizarding world already hated him for what he was.

He knew better than to apply for any jobs in wizard Britain, and he instead interviewed for an usher position at a Muggle theatre and as a waiter at a restaurant in London. The theatre manager had been somewhat surprised to have such an old applicant, and the restaurant manager hadn't been impressed with his dress, but he felt reasonably optimistic about his chances for gaining employment.

His living space was neat for the first time in years, mainly because he hadn't had the time to mess it up yet. James had always loved to make fun of him for his messiness – perfectly preppy Remus Lupin, Prefect extraordinaire, couldn't even keep his socks in the same drawer… He glanced ruefully at his suitcase. He hadn't unpacked his socks yet.

On the second Wednesday after he left the only job he'd ever truly loved, he was beginning to worry about his job status, as he'd received a call from neither manager, and so he had taken to the streets to scour out a recent newspaper and begin the long process of poring through the "Wanted" section for a suitable job that he might actually have a chance of keeping for more than a couple transformations.

He honestly felt bad when he nicked a newspaper from one of the newspaper dispensers in front of a storefront – _alohomora_ was a terribly useful spell – but he needed the paper and didn't have any change on him, and he didn't think they'd notice the difference. He took the paper and sat on a bench on the park across the street, a rather large park that stretched for several blocks and had a nice, if somewhat fake brook running throughout it. He drew out a red ballpoint pen and unfolded the paper to the appropriate section, and without realizing it he whipped out a chocolate bar and slowly began munching on it as he read through the paper. The bar was sticky from being lodged in his breast pocket on a warm summer's day, but it tasted fine, and it made the maddeningly uneventful search less of a bore.

He felt someone approaching the bench and instinctively moved over to give the person space, all while keeping his eyes focused on the paper. His eyes flitted through, line by line, ad by ad, each more discouraging than the last.

_Baby-sitter/nanny for boy, 4, and girl, 7. Must like kids and demonstrate responsibility. Applicant must be able to be on call at short notice._

_Assistant librarian. University degree a plus, knowledge of literature necessary. Accounting knowledge appreciated._

_Maid needed for gated community, six days a week between houses._

"You might want to look in the bottom-right, for the assistant position at a movie rental chain. The schedule is, quote, 'flexible according to applicant's needs,'" said a voice he instantly recognized. "Of course, there's also a position at a book store, and I believe you enjoyed that job for what it was."

"Good morning, Albus," said Remus. Despite his surprise he marked the two jobs that his visitor had mentioned, the first two he had checked off. "I wasn't aware you made it into London very often."

"Oh, on occasion." The headmaster looked quite cheerful (but when didn't he?) and was dressed in a button-up short sleeve shirt with a rainbow of colors and glaringly white jeans, not to mention sandals that would have been more appropriate for coastal Mexico than southern England. He wore a hairband in the middle of his beard and had a fishing cap on top of his head, his long white hair pulled into a simple ponytail. "It's a lovely day, and I had business in the Muggle side of town and thought I'd go for a stroll, and it occurred to me that it would be pleasant to visit you, so I did."

Remus stared blankly at his former employer, still trying not to gaggle at the sight of Albus Dumbledore, Order of Merlin First Class, in a Tommy Bahama shirt.

"Have you heard from our newest and oldest friend?" Dumbledore continued, since Remus hadn't gathered his wits enough to even begin forming a sentence. "He has not written me. For the meantime I am trying to be understanding, since he may still be unaware as to my feelings on his situation, but if his coldness continues I just may take offense."

The trademark twinkle was present, and Remus stammered, "No – I mean yes, yes, I've gotten a letter from him and wrote him back but he hasn't responded yet. I mentioned your… reborn affection for him, though, since I thought he might be unsure."

"Very good," Dumbledore stated, and Remus felt as if he'd just been awarded ten points to Gryffindor. "I must admit that the nature of my visit is not entirely social. I have some other business to attend to today, and when planning for this excursion it struck me that you might find my next piece of business exceedingly fascinating. If you are not inundated with work at the moment – which, pardon my saying so, you aren't – I wished to ask of your interest in sharing a trip with me to an area that has been… _uniquely_ touched by magic."

Remus, however, had his mind on other matters. He'd been fearful that the sight of a century-old man in beach attire would catch the attention of the nearby pedestrians, and that he might have to answer some uncomfortable questions about his wizened old friend (who looked remarkably like an aged hippie). But no one threw an awkward glance at them or stared tellingly.

"Did you cast a Notice-Me-Not Charm?" he found himself asking, intensely curious.

"Notice-Me-Not, Muggle-Repelling – perhaps," replied Dumbledore airily. He checked his watch, which clashed terribly with his jeans. "Oh dear, I seem to have run a bit late. Anyway, I would advise you to make your decision in the next – oh, fifteen seconds, I imagine. I assure you the trip will be most exciting, even with a senior citizen such as myself leading the way."

"Fifteen seconds? Why –"

"Here, place your hand on this," Dumbledore cut him off, offering a folded-up copy of _NME_ ("OASIS: MANCHESTER'S NEXT BIG BAND?"). "Yes, five seconds, I believe."

"But –"

"Hand, please."

Remus grabbed the magazine, began to say something else, and was promptly cut off by a tugging at his navel.

He hurled through time and space and everything in between for far longer than he would have liked, and after twists and turns and curves and bumps he was thrown to what he could only assume was the sweet, sweet ground. Bits of grass stuck to his eyebrows, and he wanted very much to vomit but thankfully was able to hold back the urge. He pushed himself to his feet, nearly falling from the threat of dizziness, and was not shocked to see Dumbledore, calmly standing and observing their surroundings, looking none the worse for the journey.

"I think I should learn how to land one day," Remus muttered, and he wiped off stray bits of dirt on his trousers.

"It takes experience with such long trips," Dumbledore replied, attention elsewhere. Best Remus could tell they were in the middle of a large field that looked as if it had gone a very long time without any semblance of life and was just recently regaining its fertility. "You did not Portkey to France?"

"Took a Portkey from Folkestone to Canais. That's not a very long trip in all. Where are we, by the way?"

"I'm disappointed, Remus," came Dumbledore's voice, half-tauntingly and half-humorously. "Your deductive abilities have lessened in the two weeks since your resignation."

Remus looked up from his trousers to inquire what the hell the old man was talking about when he saw it. It flared out from behind Dumbledore, alone in the distance, its stark black contrasting with his rainbow shirt and white trousers, and the ancient wizard faced toward it with a straight back. Remus stepped forward, in awe of the sight before him, and came to stand next to Dumbledore.

"Nurmengard," he breathed. "I didn't realize…"

"From this point forward I would advise you to be careful and attentive of your surroundings. This area has known incredible and horrifying magic, and I cannot tell you with any certainty that all of that magic has been nullified by the actions of our best curse-breakers or the passage of time."

A sudden chill came and Remus crossed his arms despite the summer heat. "Are we going there? To Nurmengard?"

"There is nothing of much importance at Nurmengard," Dumbledore replied coldly, and his eyes seemed set in a glare toward the great tower. "Our goal lies on the other side of the tower. Come, we don't have time for dallying."

Dumbledore led the way, and Remus followed behind him. They had landed on a great plateau, and at the edge of the plateau a line cut through the grass, as if the area had been marked by fire. Dumbledore paused at the line for half a second before stepping over it without incident, and Remus did the same. The plateau sloped into a steep hill marked by rocks and half-dead shrubs, but a narrow path had been cut between the wreckage and they traversed it in silence. The path ahead of them was long, and Remus found himself lost in thought.

He wondered about the plateau first. He knew that somewhere nearby Dumbledore had defeated Grindelwald for the final time; he knew it had been within sight of Grindelwald's bastion of Nurmengard. The line of scorched earth gave him pause, and it made him uneasy.

He also had other thoughts, thoughts about friends and enemies and love and betrayal that he didn't want to voice but nagged at him nevertheless. He had resolved to keep his stupid werewolf mouth shut when Dumbledore quite suddenly said, "On the top floor they keep their guest of honor, the very architect of the tower. Ironic, I suppose, that Grindelwald would be imprisoned by his own creation."

"Yes," said Remus. "But I'd reckon prison is better than the alternative."

"To some, yes. To Grindelwald, I do not know." They crossed a pathetic excuse of a stream and were within a hundred yards of the cliff overlooking the coast when Dumbledore took a sharp right. "I believe he wanted me to kill him, at the end. Naturally I was disinclined to indulge him."

It was the first time he had ever heard the greatest wizard alive talk about his greatest moment, and it set him off – before he could stop himself, he said, "Is it true that he was…" and then trailed off, afraid of what he had just let out.

"My friend?" replied Dumbledore. Remus didn't answer. "I consider myself rather clever, and as a result my mistakes tend to be exceedingly humongous compared to most men's. Let me just describe Gellert Grindelwald as my Peter Pettigrew, but on a much, much larger scale, and with even more disastrous consequences. Oh, there's Tiberius."

A slouched man marked by a crooked back stood next to a large stone tablet with a rune Remus couldn't decipher – three triangles within a circle. His hair was grey, tickled with the occasional patch of blond, and unlike Dumbledore's half-moon spectacles he wore thick, almost mirror-like glasses. His mustache weighed heavily upon his quite nearly nonexistent lips, and he wore a white robe, somewhat of a rarity in the wizarding world.

"Albus," said Tiberius, and Remus was surprised at the smoothness of the old man's voice. "You brought a friend?"

"Remus Lupin, meet Teberius Ogden, Order of Merlin Second Class –" Ogden snorted "– and my colleague on the Wizengamot, and also the International Confederation of Wizards."

"Lupin," said Ogden as he took Remus's hand and shook it. "Ah, yes, the Defense professor. Unfortunate situation, that."

"The pleasure is mine, Mr. Ogden."

"You have not approached it yet?" Dumbledore asked.

"No," replied Ogden. "Wanted to wait for you to show up. I'm not going near it by myself, not in this lifetime or any other. Nice clothes, by the way."

"Thank you, I had a Muggle excursion today and thought they were quite fitting. I hope we have not kept you waiting?"

"Not at all. In fact, I just got done visiting with some of the guards inside the tower."

Dumbledore's face became unreadable. "Oh…?"

"It's hell here, Albus," Ogden stated gruffly, and his mustache wrinkled apart when he spoke. "I'd heard some of the developments but hadn't paid much mind. They've started up executions in the past two years, first time in decades. Don't know why they're suddenly showing a resumed interest in that again, but I'd wager I know part of the reason."

"Your guesses are usually correct, Tiberius."

Ogden's head swiveled back and forth, as he took the effort to make sure that the three were alone. It seemed pointless to Remus, but he did not question the man. "Fudge convinced the Germans to begin intense questioning over the last year. As if survivors of Grindelwald's force had anything to do with Sirius Black! According to my sources, he even offered dementors for the cause, but the Germans didn't want to import any of those foul beings – can't blame them. Still, Black's escape worried them – maybe they thought Grindelwald would pull a fast one, too – and they _did_ start using torture tactics in their interrogations. One of the prisoners died from the pain, and several have gone insane, if they weren't already."

Remus thought it would be interesting to see how Sirius reacted to his influence all the way into Germany. Sirius probably wouldn't care.

"Ah, Cornelius, where are you leading us?" Dumbledore rubbed the bridge of his nose with painfully shut eyes. "They – they have been torturing all of the prisoners?"

"All of them, at some point," said Ogden, and Dumbledore assumed an expression of passivity. "Like Grindelwald gives a damn about Sirius Black. Hmph."

"Enough talk about depressing matters," Dumbledore stated with a strong tone that allowed no argument. "Lead the way, my friend. I wish to see this development I've heard so much about."

Ogden nodded and they began the long descent down the face of the cliff. On several occasions Remus nearly tripped, and embarrassingly enough neither of the much older men in front of him appeared to have any trouble with the rough terrain.

He had just nearly fallen flat on his face thanks to a jutting rock when Dumbledore said, without looking back, "The magic in this area has altered the environment. Until you acclimate yourself to the magic of the area, you will never find your balance."

Remus felt too foolish to ask Dumbledore what on Earth _that_ was supposed to mean and so instead cleared his mind and almost began to meditate. It was much like Occlumency, he thought, and the attempt reminded him of the afternoon on a summer day much like this one, three years prior, when he had felt the magic of Hogwarts's wards. Slowly he felt it: the ebb and flow, the pressure from one side that threw him off, the altered sense of gravity, and once he began to feel it, he began to see it, strange hues cast on disparate objects, and, for lack of a better term, he breathed it in. He took the magic and made it his; he gave his magic to the air around him. When the trade was complete, he let out a deep breath and took another step forward, and then another, and another, each one surer than the last.

The path led to a small dock that extended from a stony beach. Tied to the end of the dock were two boats, small and nondescript in nature, and when Ogden stepped inside the larger boat Remus thought it would tip over from the sudden weight. But it didn't, and Dumbledore followed after his friend without incident. Remus hesitated for a moment, making sure that he could feel the magic buzzing in the air around him, and lowered himself into the boat, careful to maintain his balance.

Ogden tapped the back of the boat with his wand, and the rope untied itself. Another tap and the boat slowly crept outwards into the open sea and then accelerated toward the island in the middle of the ocean. As they progressed, the calm waters were replaced by frothy, white-headed waves, and only a handy charm by Dumbledore prevented the trio from being thoroughly soaked. Remus felt as if the air was getting heavier around them, as if the sky had turned dark suddenly, but the air was too thick with magic for him to even know where to begin deciphering it all.

The island had the unique quality of feeling extremely far away until you were actually there, and Remus found this out firsthand when the boat came to a stop near a crag of rock and the tower now loomed directly above their heads.

"We'll not be able to go by boat around the other way," croaked Ogden hoarsely. "This is the only landing spot. We'll have to walk around."

Dumbledore stood, ridiculously serious in his tropical shirt and white jeans, and stepped out of the boat. Ogden went after him, and Remus followed, careful not to lose his footing. As they slowly made their way around the base of the rocky island, he tried to feel the magic, to feel the alterations in the environment, but it was nearly impossible. Something was throwing him off; something, he knew instinctively, wasn't right about this magic.

The walk was some twenty minutes, and on the other side of island the rock came to an abrupt halt. While the rest of the island had sloped upwards, the back side was nearly vertical, and to complicate matters the water at the base of the rock gushed into a whirlpool that was several hundred yards wide.

"Told you there was only one landing spot," Ogden muttered, but it was hard to hear him over the roar of the water.

Dumbledore ignored the whirlpool and continued along the edge of the rock face. The path became extremely narrow, and they had to press their backs to the cliff to keep their balance. Remus slipped once, and his foot went off the edge – a rock skittered down into the water and disappeared to the force of the whirlpool. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the feel of the air around him. He wasn't sure if it worked, but Dumbledore and Ogden weren't waiting up, so he continued on despite his fear.

Eventually the rock leveled out and there was a surprisingly gentle slope leading to a massive cave. Remus had a sudden sense of dread, and somehow knew that he didn't want to see whatever lay in the cave. Except he did, and that was the problem.

"I feel it," said Dumbledore softly.

"I wasn't kidding when I told you," replied Ogden, and Remus assumed that they'd already communicated about whatever it was they were about to see.

He stuck close to the other men as they ascended the stone staircase in the middle of the wall of rock. Remus began to feel very tired and wanted very much to take a rest, but the two old men were continuing on and so he felt he must match them, and he walked.

The cave was dark, lit only by a few scant torches. Dumbledore held his hand aloft and a weak light shone above them, guiding their path. They did not have to walk very far until Dumbledore and Ogden came to a stop.

"The shields are weak," Dumbledore breathed. "I did not anticipate…"

"They're getting worse," Ogden said. "Have been constantly for the last two years. It got to the point where we had to bring you in or else... well. You know."

"Pardon me, but what are we looking at?" Remus asked.

Dumbledore drew out his wand, pointed it in the air, and whispered, _"Lumos."_

The cave was filled with a blinding light. And then Remus saw it.

A huge orb of black hovered at the back of the cave, and that was the only way to describe it. It was not uniform or even – occasionally part of it would leap out, only to retreat as if shocked. More disturbingly than anything, Remus thought, it seemed _alive._

"This is what we're looking at," said Ogden. "It's known as antimagic. We're not entirely sure what the hell it is, since the Ministry's been bloody useless when it comes to lending out Unspeakables, but what we _are/u_ sure of is that it's not a friend to magic. It negates many of our best spells, and according to one report sapped a guard of half his magic just by touching him. Why it's taken up shop here we don't know, but it has, and it's not good. And it's growing."

"But you said something of a shield?"

"Strong enough magic holds it at bay," Dumbledore responded.

"_Very_ strong magic," Ogden added. "Took us twenty wizards to conjure up a shield this strong. And the shield's getting weaker. Which is why we're here."

"I need time to think."

"Of course, Albus. Here, Mr. Lupin, I think I can show you something rather interesting. Put this on," he said, and he handed Remus a necklace.

Remus thought about objecting, but decided not to, and he put on the necklace.

His skin turned blue.

"Zonko's product," he guessed.

"Of course. Silly thing, but it'll serve for our purposes. Hand it back."

Remus took it off and his skin returned to its normal, sickly shade. Ogden grabbed the necklace and wandered off to the side of the cave, looking for something. He kicked at the ground and grunted before finally gasping, "There!"

It was hard for Remus to see what the man was doing until he drew closer. He had what appeared to be a large metal beam with a claw at the end of it, and the necklace had been placed inside the claw's grasp. Ogden glared at the antimagic for a moment and then slowly began extending the beam towards it.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Remus questioned worriedly.

"Not at all. Scares me every time I try it."

The air around the beam crackled blue as it approached the black mass, and Remus saw the shield for the first time. Ogden pushed the beam farther, and just as it was drawing close to the antimagic a black glob shot outward and engulfed the necklace. Ogden flinched but recovered and withdrew the beam, though he kept the claw on the other side of the shield, and the necklace glowed a bright green for several long seconds before returning to its normal color.

He pulled the beam to the other side of the shield. Carefully he removed the necklace from the claw and tossed it to Remus.

"I'm not entirely certain about this."

Ogden shrugged, and Remus put on the necklace. His skin stubbornly decided not to turn blue.

"Told you," said Ogden.

"Tiberius," stated Dumbledore, "I am ready. I have your support, I trust?"

"Of course."

"Do you want my help, Albus?" Remus offered.

"I have no intention of dying today, Remus," Dumbledore replied curtly, "so no, I do not require your assistance at this moment. I appreciate the sentiment, however.

Remus grimaced. Dumbledore nodded, pointed his wand at the black orb, and whispered something under his breath. Suddenly the air was a wave of blue; Remus was nearly blown backward by some invisible force, but Dumbledore stood tall, Ogden's hand on his shoulder.

For minutes on end the headmaster wrestled with the suddenly visible shield, occasionally stopping to wave his hand or ponder a change or shout a word in a language Remus didn't know. Remus sat and watched, enthralled.

Then, like a tiger preparing to strike, Dumbledore leapt forward, screamed something indecipherable, and thrust his wand at the blue wall. Red veins crackled throughout it from the point of contact, and then everything went dark.

Half a minute later a lone light glowed in front of Remus, and he could see Ogden's face half illuminated, light glinting off of his glasses.

"Lupin… the torches…"

Remus shook himself out of his stupor and hastily lit the torches, which had been snuffed in all the mayhem. Then he saw Dumbledore. The elderly wizard was hunched over, breathing heavily, his arm slung around his friend Ogden for support. Sweat was evident through his rainbow shirt, and other arm hung limp at his side. For his part, Ogden didn't look especially energetic, either, and Remus supposed that would be because he had aided Dumbledore's magic during the incantation.

"Remus…" Dumbledore wheezed. "Now… your assistance would be much appreciated…"

"Of course, of course. Here, give me your arm, Albus." Remus grabbed Dumbledore by the forearm and threw the arm across his shoulders, supporting him with his left hand. Slowly the threesome made their way out of the cave, Remus supporting Dumbledore and Ogden limping along with both of them, and after a long time they had reached the bottom of the slope, ten feet from the edge of the cliff.

Remus helped the other two sit, and Dumbledore coughed.

"Excuse me, but I must rest," he said, as if anyone was growing impatient with him. "I hope you now understand why I felt the need to bring another visitor, Tiberius."

Ogden grunted something and lay back against the rock, eyes resolutely shut.

Remus kneeled on his knee and stuck his hand inside his pockets, finally retrieving what he was seeking. "Here, Albus," he said, placing the half-eaten bar of chocolate in Dumbledore's right hand, "take this. I don't know if it will help, but there's dark magic around, and it certainly can't hurt."

"Yes, very kind of you, Remus…" Dumbledore had some difficulty in breaking off a piece of chocolate and placing it in his mouth, and slowly began to chew, pain etched into his century-old features. "This place is not meant for the living, I fear. I do not think I would survive another attempt at that."

Ogden made no reply. Remus looked out toward the sea and brushed his hair from his face, thinking of magic and nothing and everything in between. The whirlpool roared.

-

The lift stopped with a jolt, and Hermione stepped into the plain corridor. She hadn't thought to bring anything other than her wand and a suitcase – containing a myriad of her own notes, notes from books she'd pored over in the past month, and of course Remus's own dissertation – and now she wished she had brought something else, although she couldn't figure out what it was she'd forgotten. She scowled at her own silliness and crossed the hall to the black door. She'd always avoided looking straight at it on her way down to the courts, but she couldn't well avoid it now, could she? Her palm was sweaty against the doorknob, and gently she twisted it and pushed the door open.

The Entrance Chamber was darkly lit, and when she stepped inside the door closed of its own accord. Twelve doors surrounded her; twelve doors rotated with the walls, so that it was impossible for her to know which door led to what. A shiver ran down her spine.

"Hermione Granger, I presume," stated a scratchy, female voice from somewhere in front of her.

"Yes?" she said, feeling quite cowardly and idiotic.

"Very good, very good." She made out the form of a short woman, who stepped out of the darkness to approach her. The woman was probably around forty, with a square face, cropped black hair, and a rather wide nose. "Minister Shacklebolt spoke to me about meeting you here today. I am your assigned Unspeakable. My name is Florence Babbling."

"Are you –"

"Yes, Bathsheda is my aunt," came the reply before the question. "A wonderful woman, taught me everything I know about Ancient Runes. Before we continue, I trust that nothing we speak of today will leave these walls."

"Yes," breathed Hermione, "of course."

"Then we may proceed. I notice that Minister Shacklebolt sent one of his legal counsel to speak with us about population and magical theory, and not anyone from the Department for Census and Population Estimation. An interesting choice."

"I'm Muggle-born."

"And I'm a woman, but that does not mean I am fit to be a gynecologist," Babbling retorted. At Hermione's raised eyebrow, she continued, "Yes, I am somewhat familiar with Muggle terminology. It's really quite ludicrous for wizards and witches to be as ignorant as we are; the only reason the Muggles aren't obsessed with us is because they don't know we exist. We're an ignorant, pretentious lot… but I do hope that you have some qualifications outside of your birth."

"Well," said Hermione, feeling flushed, "I – I have been very interested in the topic – I've been reading on the subject and it's really caught my interest, and I don't think anyone else has really shown that they give a damn so far, and if I get too far in over my head I'll be able to tell Kingsley what he needs to know, at least, and then he could assign more qualified people if something's lacking in me."

"Tell me what you're reading," Babbling commanded, and Hermione wondered if this woman knew how to ask a polite question.

Nonetheless, she dutifully answered: "Waffling, Stalk, some Alacourt… most importantly, an unfinished work by a man named Remus Lupin…"

"Lupin." Babbling tested out the name and nodded. "Yes. Of course, I've heard about him in the news recently. I was not pleased to hear of his death. He was two years below me at Hogwarts, a nice fellow who hung out with a gang of hooligans and never had the heart to contradict them."

_I was not pleased to hear of his death._ Hermione fought the urge to snort. Perhaps everything she'd heard about Unspeakables and their communication skills was true.

"Yes, well, he wrote about how magic was being abused in the environment and how old spells – 'old magic,' he called it – were allowing magic to drain and disperse and were destroying magical hotspots," Hermione explained. "It was a bit more complicated than that, but his basic thesis was that the destruction of these hotspots, or 'hubs,' was related to the drop in Muggle-born fertility rates at the present time and historically speaking."

"I am intrigued," Babbling announced confidently. Hermione realized how much she sounded like a person who had just learned the language. "Interesting theories, to say the least, and ones that are fairly in line with our own, although I believe we have much more data than Mr. Lupin could have ever hoped to accumulate. Tell me, Hermione Granger, did he ever speak of antithetical matter?"

"Uh – pardon, what?"

"Antithetical matter," huffed Babbling, who she saw was growing impatient. "Some colloquially refer to it as 'antimagic.'"

"Oh, antimagic – of course!" Hermione exclaimed, feeling inordinately foolish. "Yes, yes, he did mention that. He had mostly speculation on that, as it wasn't something he came into contact with very often and there's not much literature available on it."

"Tell me of his thoughts on antimagic."

"Well, it was mostly speculation, and he never got very far with it, since he died in the war before I think he could finish, but he seemed to think it was related to the usage of magic. He postulated that it was some kind of… what'd he call it? 'Magical backlash.' He compared it to resilience found in Muggles, and thought that it was a negative force that arose out of an abuse of magic, although he never delved too far into it."

Babbling rubbed her chin with her palm and said, "It would have been a pleasure to have met this Mr. Lupin. His theories are somewhat amateurish in nature, at least as explained by yourself, but our own theories and work are not much better at the moment, and he does seem like he was an especially observant man. Which is uncommon in men, incidentally."

It took Hermione an embarrassing amount of time to figure out that the Unspeakable had made a joke.

"But Mr. Lupin was very much correct on one point – the two phenomena are related, at least from a theoretical point of view. I could speak to you at length about the Muggle-born dilemma, which will expand into a magical dilemma without proper care, but that is considerably less fascinating than what I wish to speak of today, and I believe you have demonstrated the appropriate intellectual acumen to appreciate my subject of choice."

Hermione got the impression that to be "disinteresting" was the height of shame, which probably explained why Babbling was an Unspeakable in the first place.

"Kinglsey wanted me to ask specifically about the Muggle-born numbers," she said regretfully.

"Minister Shacklebolt can wait," said Babbling in a cold voice. "In two weeks during our quarterly report we would have informed him of everything he needed to know in the first place, as we have with each Minister for the past three decades. Minister Shacklebolt's chief concern the last five months was that we were working and that our focus had returned to academics and not the useless propaganda that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and his puppet Thicknesse had forced upon us in the preceding year. We have warned Ministers of the Muggle-born dilemma, among other crises, for the last ten years, but Bagnold and Fudge and Scrimgeour were not much interested. We hope that Minister Shacklebolt will be more open to counsel on many issues."

"He will be," Hermione stated. "I personally guarantee it."

"I will accept your word and not ask you to perform any type of magical vow," said Babbling, and with this Hermione realized who the Unspeakable reminded her of: Luna. A colder, odder, and much scarier Luna, but there was definitely a little Lovegood in her manner of speaking. "But today, I would like to show you something. I believe that when you see this, you will realize the seriousness of our situation, and by tasting the extreme you will understand the mundane."

There was also a little Trelawney in Babbling as well, Hermione decided as she nodded and said, "Lead the way."

The Unspeakable closed her eyes and began to hum. Then she extended her palm toward Hermione, shuddered, and stopped.

"Come," she ordered and turned on her heel. Hermione scrambled to follow her to the door directly behind them. Babbling stopped in front of it and traced her finger across the edge of the metal. "This is not the door we seek."

"What is it?" Hermione found herself asking, cursing herself for her natural curiosity.

"This is a room that always remains locked. Within it lies a subject that is more complex than anything else that we study in the Department of Mysteries. Naturally, this is our favorite room." Babbling turned to her right, walked along the wall, and touched the next door. She smiled, almost. "This is our destination."

"After you," said Hermione politely.

Babbling didn't hear her, as she'd stepped up onto the threshold of the door and stepped straight through it.

Hermione gaped for a few stupid seconds, then recollected herself and thought about the situation. It shouldn't surprise her, really. It was just like Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters. Malfoy would be smirking at her stupidity now.

Draco Malfoy's voice lodged in her head, Hermione leaned forward and stepped through the door and into the darkness.

Her first impression was of a nuclear reactor. She'd never been inside of a nuclear reactor, but this was how they were always portrayed in science-fiction movies – a large, fluorescent sphere, floating in midair. The entire room was rather dark, with a few blue torches providing the only light. Around the sphere, which seemed to be held at bay by some invisible force, were small tables with what looked like trays and bowls, in addition to syringes and other tools used for experimentation.

"This, Hermione Granger, is antimagic."

She wasn't sure whether she should be impressed or frightened. "You study it here?"

"That's what we do, yes. We extract miniscule quantities through the shield and experiment on them on this side –" Babbling gestured to the tables and trays "– to determine what we can about the antithetical matter. It is a difficult and dangerous business, but it is necessary."

"What have you found?"

"I will show you."

She led Hermione to one of the tables and grabbed something that looked like a metal handle. Once grabbed, a large rod extended from the handle, and Babbling attached a miniature syringe to the end of the rod. Delicately, she stepped forward and probed the rod toward the sphere. The shield was visible as the metal passed through it, and the antimagic lay still as the syringe approached it. Then, gently, the syringe dipped into the black mass, but only for a moment, and Babbling quickly retrieved it through the magical shield.

Little bits of the matter had ended up on the outside of the syringe, and Babbling quickly whipped out her wand and muttered something as she pointed it toward the syringe. There was a red glow and the black particles dissolved before their eyes, and Babbling let out a sigh.

"Antithetical matter can be rather excitable," she explained.

"You say that as if it had a mind of its own," said Hermione.

Babbling remained silent as she deposited the contents of the syringe into a tray. The small black mass lay still for a moment before violently shooting upwards, toward Hermione. She took a quick step backwards, but there was no need – the antimagic met an invisible shield and bounced back into the tray, quivering as if concussed.

"It did not take us long to learn how much caution we should take with the matter," Babbling said over her shoulder. "While it is in the tray you are safe. It is only dangerous when not properly constrained."

"How do you constrain it?" Hermione asked.

Babbling frowned and grabbed a pair of tongs, turning away from the younger woman. "With extremely powerful magic and a couple spare hours to waste." She looked at Hermione and then at a bag nearby the table. "May I ask if you have anything of magical qualities? Nothing expensive of or particular value, of course, but we commonly use this technique to give an example of the antithetical matter's nature."

"Er, yes, I think I've got something right here…"

She rifled inside her bag and drew out a wristwatch that George had given her on her last visit to the shop. It was a horrid little thing that quite enjoyed to scream out the time at random intervals, and of course it liked to insult the wearer at whatever opportunity it got. George found it amusing.

"Test it," Babbling instructed her. "Make sure that it works before we proceed with our experimentation."

With some hesitation she wrapped the watch around her wrist and clicked it into place. Immediately a nasal, whiny voice came out: _"The time is twenty past noon! Speaking of which, why aren't you on your lunch break? Not that you need to eat anymore, from the looks of you –"_

Hermione snapped off the wristwatch and handed it to Babbling with a prim smile. "It's working, I think."

"Indeed," said Babbling, and she thought the other woman actually smirked as she glanced at her waist. Hermione's ears turned quite red, but the Unspeakable grabbed the watch with the tongs and lowered it into the tray.

The antimagic lept up and, without a pesky shield to get in the way of it, covered the wristwatch so that it wasn't visible to the eye. Little bits of black matter crept up the tongs, but they seemed to recognize that there was no magic within the tongs, and they shot back to the wristwatch. It began to glow a bright shamrock green, and then dulled back to its original silver.

Babbling withdrew the tongs and the watch. "Take it. Put it on."

Hermione hesitated for a moment before obeying, and when she snapped the watch into place on her wrist there was no annoying voice to insult her.

"The watch should be working perfectly fine outside of its magical properties," Babbling elaborated, setting the tongs down next to the tray. Hermione noticed that there was much less of the black goo inside the tray than there had been prior to the demonstration. "Antithetical matter specifically negates magic. It ignores anything else."

"Is it destroyed by the magic?" asked Hermione as she placed the wristwatch back in her bag, making a note to give it to George later.

"They negate each other. Well, that statement was not entirely factual. You can't actually destroy magic, per se, since magic is energy, in some form or another, and really there's no reason that more energy can't be converted into magic. What antithetical matter does is something that nothing else we've seen can do on such a scale – even death. Antithetical matter provides a violent conversion of energy, from magical energy into potential energy, and in doing so disrupts the magical environment. Magic is constantly ebbing and flowing; organisms take on magic from the environment, spells take on magic from the environment – that's all natural. But antithetical matter makes that happen at a much, much faster rate. And that is why it perplexes and worries us so much."

"What does… what would happen if antimagic came into contact with a person?"

"It would depend on how much antithetical matter took hold of the subject," Babbling replied thoughtfully. "It takes a certain amount to do so much damage, of course. But the results would be the same."

Hermione paled. "They would lose their magic?"

"Or an extent of it, depending on the amount. But yes. As I previously digressed, antithetical matter only affects magic. The two cancel each other out, which is what this shield does. Once you pass the Tybalt quantity, or the quantity at which the level of magic is the square of the mass of the antithetical matter, then antimagic can be repelled without damage to the shield."

But Hermione was hardly listening. She was not concerned with shields or Tybalt quantities; she remembered a discussion she'd had, much like this one, but in a much different setting.

_I lost my magic. All of it. I am, for lack of a better description, a common Muggle._

"I met someone who had lost their magic," Hermione said suddenly. She searched Babbling's face for something but didn't find it. "He said something cold and metallic had covered him, during a battle..."

"Oh, you've met Errolan Jones?" responded Babbling, smiling for the first time since they'd met. "Fascinating man. Yes, he encountered antithetical matter at the massacre at Charleston-on-the-Avon. It was a perfect environment for it, really, should've expected that, especially considering his particular situation."

"Wait – you know about him?" Hermione felt the anger rise up inside her, felt it flush her cheeks and make her hair stick to the side of her head. "He's been sitting in a hospital bed for months while the Healers try to figure out what's wrong with him, and you bloody well _knew_ this entire time!"

The Unspeakable's smile disappeared, and her expression would have looked more fitting on a vampire than a human being. "Of course we knew about Errolan Jones. That's our job, after all. If you cannot comprehend why we must keep our knowledge secret, then perhaps there's not much I can do for you."

"You should tell him," Hermione said quietly. "He deserves to know."

The hard lines of Florence Babbling's face softened. "He will know, in two weeks' time. We must file our report."

"Yes, right, your report," Hermione stated rather nastily, and she sighed to calm herself down. "You said that Charleston-on-the-Avon was a perfect environment. What does that mean?"

"It means that antithetical matter tends to crop up in areas of similar natures."

"That's a lot of help."

"I could show you, if you wish," Babbling offered, and for a second Hermione thought she saw an eager glint in the woman's eyes, as if she were looking for company. "There are only a handful of locales in the world where antithetical matter clumps in such masses as to completely alter the environment, and fortunately for our cause one of those locales resides in England – or near it, at the very least. In two days I would be most willing to take you there."

A stray bit of antimagic shot up in the tray and bounced off the shield, and Hermione watched it as she thought over the prospect. Ron was still out of town and mad with her. One business trip wouldn't change that. Harry would understand…

Harry.

"You said antimagic could be negated," Hermione said. "That antimagic that attacked my wristwatch – it was negated, correct?"

"Correct," said Babbling, for once seeming confused and not the other way around. Hermione relished the change.

"And the magic in my watch was also completely converted?"

"Yes, that is what I said," she reiterated hotly.

"Then yes, I would be delighted to accompany you, and you can answer the rest of my questions that I don't have time for today," Hermione said in a brisk tone. "Oh, and I'll be bringing a guest. Don't worry, he's utterly reliable."

"If… if you insist."

"Good." Hermione hiked the strap of her book bag higher on her shoulder and beckoned for Babbling to lead the way, which she did with some disappointment. "By the way, where is this mass of antimagic that you're so excited about?"

Babbling coughed, and the hacking of her voice carried throughout the empty room, followed by her slightly less scratchy response: "Azkaban."


	7. Earth

"Earth."

-

_Antimagic is obviously the most disturbing development in magical theory and research in the last several centuries, and the fact that we know so little about the subject should only keep us on edge. How could such a substance come to be formed, and how can we destroy it?_

_From what we know, extremely large levels of magic can help keep antimagic contained, and theoretically a ridiculously large level of magic would be able to negate a large body of antimagic, but this is all speculation. Of more import to me is the prevention of antimagic's creation._

_Who knows how antimagic affects the environment, and who knows how it's actually formed. Again, most of what we (or at least I, in this case) have to go on is, again, conjecture. But let's speculate for a moment, and try to find a common thread in the formation of antimagic._

_Nurmengard. Azkaban. Atlantis. The Rhine. Northern Russia. Rwanda. The Congo. Venezuela. Japan._

_These are the hosts of the most significant bodies of antimagic in this century. At first glance they do not seem to share a trait, but the first three on the list are most telling._

_Nurmengard. Azkaban. Atlantis._

_Through this trio the secret of the rest of the list is revealed, and we can begin to see why antimagic forms. These locales are not bound by geography, or climate, or population._

_They are bound by death._

-

Muggle checkout lines, Remus knew from experience, moved just as slowly as wizard checkout lines, despite the mysteries of technology and the supposed advancements in society that wizards had yet to undertake. Still, while he considered himself a very patient man, it didn't make sense that the express lane of a grocery store would take longer than any of the other checkout aisles. Ten items or less. It really wasn't that difficult of a concept.

"Sir, you've got twenty-three items," said the young woman behind the register. Her lip ring reminded him of Tonks. "This is the express aisle."

"Oh my, I'm so sorry, young lady," replied the bumbling old man with thin straw hair and a tie that didn't match his jacket. "I'll just move on over to the other aisle…"

The girl's lips squirmed to the side of her face and her shoulders sagged in resignation. "No, it's all right, I'll just check them out here. Here, hand me the radishes…"

Remus tapped the metal basket against the vending refrigerator next to him. His eyes lingered on a soda. Cherry Coke. He really shouldn't – it was Sirius's money, and Cherry Coke was so unhealthy and so unnecessary –

He slid open the door to the refrigerator and hastily grabbed two of the bottles, tossing them inside the basket. Sirius wouldn't mind: he'd gotten one for both of them. And Sirius didn't care much for money. He would repay him.

He wouldn't, actually, since Sirius wouldn't let him, and he felt somewhat guilty for taking advantage of his friend's generosity, but it was Cherry Coke, blast it all, and that settled it.

He was equally tempted to Confund the mother in front of him into going into another aisle, but he drew a line in his mind and stopped himself. Besides, her daughter actually was kind of adorable when she wasn't trying to sneak candy bars into her mother's basket.

The woman was checked out and Remus placed his basket on the (useless) conveyor belt atop the counter. The clerk grabbed the soda bottles and started the tedious process of ringing up the prices.

"Tough crowd," Remus joked.

"I want to kill myself," said the young woman in a monotone, and he decided that she most definitely did not remind him of Tonks.

The late summer heat had abated for a day, and instead the sky was smothered with rain clouds, although they were the lazy sort of rain cloud that lounged about all day and never actually got about to raining. Remus sniffed the air before heading along the side of the asphalt and darting into an alcove between a fire exit and a dumpster. Holding his grocery bag tightly to his chest, he winced as the familiar pull grabbed him, and he landed without consequence in the alley dissecting the end of Grimmauld Place.

He hurried along the edge of the street with his hood drawn above his head, bag tucked under his elbow. A woman and her dog stood across the road from Number Twelve, and he waited for them to move along before he pictured the house and slipped inside the stairwell that suddenly appeared.

"HALF-BREED – TRAITOR – FILTHY, GOOD-FOR-NOTHING SCUM OF THE EARTH," Mrs. Black greeted him warmly as he entered the standing room and pushed down his hood.

"Hello, Walburga."

The portrait continued shouting at him, but he moved along. Noticing the troll's leg umbrella holder had been knocked over, he bent down to right it, and after doing so moved along to the kitchen, where he heard loud voices instantly familiar to him.

"Hello Dora," he stated before he'd even entered the kitchen. He crossed the threshold and set the grocery bag down on the counter. "Did you notice that you knocked over the troll's leg again?"

"Oh well," she replied with an air of nonchalance, but Remus saw her cheeks flush prettily. Her hair was purple today, his personal favorite, and braided in the back. "I tend to do that a lot. I hope you were a doll and fixed it for me."

"As always." He grabbed a soda bottle out of the bag and tossed it to Sirius, throwing Tonks a regretful look. "I'm sorry, I didn't know you'd be over. Would you like mine?"

"No, no, I'm not thirsty at all, go ahead."

Remus was caught between feeling grateful that he got to keep his Cherry Coke or regretful that he hadn't been able to give her something. He unscrewed the bottle and took a sip.

"Please tell me you got something halfway-decent," Sirius begged in a plaintive voice that didn't befit a thirty-six-year-old man. "I'm going to die without something sweet."

"Don't worry, I've got it." Remus pulled the remaining contents out of the grocery sack: two cartons of double-fudge brownie ice cream and one of orange sherbet, and multiple bags of gummy bears and easy-bake white chocolate chip cookies. "I can't see how you intend to eat all of this, but it's your decision."

"I've converted one of the spare bedrooms into a workout room," Sirius said with a shrug, and he grabbed one of the cartons and shoved it into the icebox. "I was able to finagle Emmaline Vance into bringing by some Muggle equipment she found at a garage sale, and I made my own, uh, improvements. By the way, Moony, this soda is delicious."

"I adore Muggle soda," Remus agreed. "They'll never beat our chocolate, though, but Rolos are a nice substitute for Honeydukes."

Having finished packing away the ice cream and sherbet, Sirius ripped open a bag of gummies and popped one in his mouth before offering the bag to his visitors.

Remus shook him off, but Tonks grabbed one out of the bag with an apologetic smile. "Sorry, boys, but I should be off. You can't pretend to catch yourself, Sirius."

"So soon?" Sirius whined. "Ah, well, thanks for dropping by, as it is. Give Kingsley my best. I've got a feeling I'll be in Belgium this week, I would quite fancy a visit to Brussels."

"I always thought you were more of an Amsterdam kind of chap," Tonks said with a smirk, and Sirius let out a bark of a laugh and chewed on another gummy bear.

"Are you quite sure you have to leave, Dora?" Remus asked, frowning. "It's not yet a quarter to three. Surely you could stay a few more minutes?"

"Quit it Remus, now you sound like Sirius," Tonks said, but she beamed at him for some reason he couldn't fathom. "And no, I really would love to, but I have to pick up my dad from work, as well. He sprained his ankle or something to that effect. But if you old men are awake at midnight, I could stop by and tell you scary stories by the fire if you really wish."

"If you're serious, then I'll be up," came Sirius's reply through a mouthful of candy mammals. "I've nothing better to do. It's not a full moon, is it Remus?"

"Next Tuesday," he said automatically, and he searched Tonks's face for a twitch, a raised eyebrow, a slight sneer. He was unsuccessful in his attempt.

Tonks gave Sirius a hug and said, "Well, perhaps I shall stop by, but I can't promise it. And only if I get a scoop of that sherbet, d'you hear?"

"One scoop," Sirius promised her, ruffling her purple hair as she disentangled herself from him. "I won't give up a single flake more."

"We'll see about that, old cousin of mine." Tonks gave Remus a quick one-armed hug and kissed his cheek, but even when she pulled away she remained tantalizingly close, her eyes (green today, but very unlike Lily's) boring into Remus's own. "Dumbledore wants to speak with you tomorrow. Kingsley and I are supposed to be there too."

"I remember."

He didn't know when her palm had moved to his cheek, but it pulled away all too quickly, and then she was in the hallway. "Bye, boys!"

"Bye," they muttered, and she left, the signature crash of the umbrella stand and shrieks of Sirius's dearly departed mother announcing her exit. After he realized he'd been staring at an empty portrait she'd been standing in front of ever since she'd left, Remus moved his eyes to his companion, who wore a disarming grin.

"I _do_ hope you two end up together," Sirius stated as he hopped up onto the table and shoveled a few more gummies into his mouth. "I would love it if you married into the family, especially if you gave me a bunch of wolfy little cousins twice removed."

"It's not like that, Sirius," he asserted, unconvincingly. "And I'll braid Lucius Malfoy's hair before I bring another werewolf into this world."

Sirius raised his eyebrows and set the bag down. "Stop being such a drama queen. The werewolf I've known since I was eleven turned out to be a pretty nice guy, although he left his balls somewhere at graduation, I think. Besides, I'm great at predicting relationships."

"Oh really?" asked Remus, determinedly ignoring his friend's other, more disturbing comments.

"Yes, I will have you know."

"Name a few."

"Lily and James for starters."

"You told James she'd kill him if he went within ten feet of her."

Sirius chuckled. "Yes, but I _did_ win ten Galleons from Frank Longbottom when they finally got together. And remember, that's when he was in training and completely broke because he was saving for the wedding."

"Right," Remus said, and now that he thought about it he did remember the look of glee on Sirius's face when James finally succeeded in cajoling Lily to go out with him. "Name another."

"Well, besides you and my darling cousin, I guess I could say Lucius and Narcissa or Bellatrix and her bastard of a husband, but they don't entirely qualify as people," he said, and began ticking off couples on his hand. "I knew as soon as my mother decried Ted Tonks and Muggle-borns in general that he'd elope with Andromeda. Ooh, Regulus and that little snit Francine… d'you remember her? I bloody well _told_ James fourth-year that that would happen, and it did. Merlin that was a terrible experience. Hm. I don't know – what about Harry and Hermione, would you say?"

"Ron definitely fancies Hermione," Remus said, shaking his head. "I don't really know her feelings, but she's usually too busy with Harry for me to read her otherwise."

"See!" Sirius exclaimed with a gleam of triumph in his eye. "Told you. They'll be married by twenty, mark my words."

This proclamation was met by an indignant snort. "Like Hermione would let that happen. And besides, Harry's utterly clueless in regards to her, thinks of her as a sister, I think. I'm not saying they wouldn't make a marvelous couple, but they're a bit oblivious so far, at least. I know Ginny Weasley had a huge crush on Harry, but I'm not sure how much of that was Harry and how much was the Boy Who Lived. I think a lot of it has been hero-worship, although she seemed more normal this summer."

"Potters like red hair," Sirius replied fondly. "I can see that. Hermione reminds me of Lily quite a bit, and even some of Alice Longbottom. That girl's got a brain in her."

"I know. I did teach her, after all."

They ended up in one of the living rooms, the place where they spent most of their time with the exception of the kitchen, and the sat on the sofas with Cherry Coke (which was rather difficult to replenish but Remus thought he'd gotten the hang of it after a while) and talked and talked and talked. At some point, during a lull in the conversation, Sirius picked up Remus's bookbag and began rifling through it, and Remus felt entirely too lethargic to begin to lecture him on the value of respecting privacy.

"You've got a load of stuff in here, Moony," Sirius declared as he pulled out yet another worn paperback (_The Brothers Karamazov_) and tossed it to the side. "Hey, what's this?"

Remus pulled his head up and saw that Sirius had grabbed his long-unfinished work on magic. For a moment he wanted to deny the importance of it, to save the inevitable "Moony you're such a bookworm" diatribe, but he was much too tired for it, and instead he replied, "Just something I've worked on in my spare time. I doubt you'd find it interesting, but you can read it if you like. It's not finished."

"It's obscenely huge," Sirius stated with a skeptical glance at the thick packet of papers and parchment. "What's it about?"

"It's only that large because there are so many notes and draft papers," Remus responded, and he straightened out of his slouch and moved his bottle between his legs. "It's about magic. It's – okay, uh, to boil it down, one day, when we were still in Hogwarts, someone – you, incidentally, if I remember it correctly – made a remark about how there were so many empty classrooms, and I thought that was interesting, and then I saw that the magical population had decreased quite a bit over the past few centuries, and from there I just kind of branched out into whatever interested me. It's long and rambling and not entirely lucid but one day I might edit it, once I've finished it."

Sirius's tone was incredulous: "You've been working on this since Hogwarts?"

"Well. Yes, but only sporadically. I haven't done much with it recently, since I've been rather busy and some of the areas I'd like to explore I don't have the resources to pursue."

"Huh." Sirius began rifling through the pages, although he was careful not to bend any of the papers, which Remus appreciated. "Right. So, dear fellow Marauder, why is the magical population getting smaller? Doesn't that just mean that magical people are having less babies?"

"Yes and no. You've got the purebloods, who are slowly dying out –"

"Good riddance."

Remus frowned and continued, "But there's not been a huge dropoff in the actual number of kids in magical families. There _have_ been higher numbers of Squibs – did you know that in the 1200's Squibs were almost unheard of? – but one of the main problems, when added to the moderate dropoff in magical fertility rate, is the extreme dropoff in Muggle-born fertility rate. I mean to say… oh, this is terribly boring, isn't it?"

"Merlin," Sirius breathed, and he rolled his eyes. "Remus, trust me, I've been bored out of my mind the past few weeks. Nothing you could say could make me disinterested, unless it involved Snape shagging Voldemort's scaly bits off. And if you'll remember, I'm actually quite intelligent and can understand what you're saying without you needing to take a five-minute break every three sentences for a listening comprehension check."

"Right," Remus said, blushing. "Well. Okay, so the Muggle-born fertility rate has dropped loads – while Muggles are increasing in population, less and less Muggle-born witches and wizards are being born, which is huge because that's where over half of the magical population in Britain has historically come from. All of this pureblood nonsense was fairly subdued, actually, until the Muggle-born numbers plummeted. The whole question is why?

"I think, at least, that it's due to the environment. You see, as I think of it, the Earth is one integrated system, and magic is part of that system. Magic is just like any other energy – it can't be created, only converted. I can cast a spell, but I couldn't cast a powerful spell if I hadn't eaten in three days. Magic is just an extremely powerful, condensed form of energy. For example, this replenishing spell – it only works because of my magic reserves. If I was dead-tired and hungry, it wouldn't work because I wouldn't have any magic to work off of to replace what I'm creating with my spell, which is where we get the deal with food shortages."

"Basic magical theory," Sirius interjected, holding the parchment in his lap. "So what does this have to do with population?"

"They all link together. Magic is very fluid, you see. There's what's inside magical individuals, there's what's contained by magical creatures and plants, and there's what's contained by spells or wards. And then there's environmental magic, which is the most important factor. Basically, when you have all these old spells and wards lying around that haven't been recast in centuries – which there are a surprising amount of, you'll be shocked to know – and all those spells start to leak magic, the magic disperses and scatters. Then, to sustain themselves, the spells have to call on environmental magic, which lowers the amount of magic in the environment. The change has been shockingly drastic, actually.

"What you have to understand," continued Remus, taking a breath, "is that I don't think magic is genetic, or not entirely so. I believe there's a gene that's got something to do with it, that makes the individual more receptive to magic, and of course that's more prevalent in magical families. But environmental magic seems to trigger something in the development of a fetus, and even a small child, and when that magic is lowered, it only makes sense that the hugest impact would be on Muggles."

Sirius stared at him for a while before grinning. "That's quite a theory there, Moony. I hope I'm not the first person you've talked to about this."

"You're not," Remus said. "I talked to Dumbledore once about it, among a handful of others. He seems to have similar thoughts, although he didn't elaborate."

"Typical Dumbledore," Sirius agreed, and Remus knew that it had been a good decision to leave out Snape's contribution. "Interesting stuff. It's too bad you haven't finished. You really should, you know."

"I'm probably entirely wrong on a lot of this. I'm not a theorist by trade."

"So what? If you're wrong you're wrong." And out of Sirius's mouth it didn't sound that bad. "It would be a load of fun, at least for a brainiac like you. I'll always prefer a little more action, but you like this stuff. Hey, maybe Hermione will end up being your research assistant one day!"

Remus smiled and mumbled, "More likely the other way around."

"All right, I'll give you that," Sirius said with a laugh, and he stood and stretched his arms above his head. "Just think about it! You can be Hermione's research partner, and Harry can be Tonks's Auror partner. The two couples."

"I really don't think Harry and Hermione will end up together, Sirius."

Sirius smirked at him for a long time before he reddened and realized his failure of omission.

"Oh come off it, it's only because we were arguing about it earlier –"

"No, no, you admitted it Remus!" Sirius cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted to no one in particular, "REMUS LUPIN WANTS TO MARRY MY LITTLE COUSIN AND DESPOIL HER! THE BIG BAD WOLF WANTS TO DESPOIL LITTLE PINK RIDING HOOD!"

"Christ, Sirius," Remus growled, fighting the urge to smile.

"You know you want it, Remus," Sirius replied. He grinned. "You're going to be family soon!"

Remus hid his head in his hands and Sirius laughed all the way into the kitchen.

-

Hermione brushed the soot from her jeans and stepped out of the hearth into the living room of Harry and Ron's flat. She noticed that there was less mess this time, although she wasn't sure if that was due to Ron's absence or an increased sense of cleanliness on Harry's part. Carefully she moved to the kitchen, craning her head over the counter to look for her friend.

"Harry?"

There was no answer. Hermione made her way to Harry's door and opened it with a delicate push. A smile tugged at her face, and her feet lightly padded against the carpeted ground to where his bed lay.

"Harry," she whispered and received no reply. Leaning closer, skimming the back of her hand across her forehead, she leaned in and whispered louder, "Harry."

"Egh," he said, or something to that effect. His eyes struggled to open, and he rolled over on his back, attempting to whack her hand away but ending up with his wrist against hers. He blinked. "Morning, 'Mione."

She hated the nickname but forgave him since she wasn't sure he could properly enunciate his own name at the moment, let alone her own Shakespearean moniker. "It's ten-thirty. You need to wake up."

"Gah." He made an effort to sit and stared sleepily at the opposite wall. "Merlin, it's early. I hate it when you don't let me sleep in."

"Ten-thirty _is_ sleeping in, Harry," she replied amusedly, but Harry muttered something under his breath and glared at her. "We need to be there at eleven. I didn't realize you were still asleep."

"I'm always asleep," Harry replied without any of her levity. "Merlin. We couldn't have done this as a lunch date?"

"I already ate. This could take a while."

Harry growled and attempted to hit her with his pillow, but she dodged it, laughing. "I hate you, Granger."

"I'll assume that that's the sleepiness talking," Hermione replied. Her brows furrowed. "Did you get it?"

"Yeah," he said quietly. "McGonagall helped me get it yesterday. I'll have you know that I'm not too hopeful about this whole thing."

"That's probably for the best. This is all conjecture, after all, but it's worth a try. Now, get _up_, you lazy Auror wannabe. We need to be there in thirty minutes."

Half-heartedly, and with help from Hermione's hand yanking him by the neck upwards, he shifted out of his bed and stood up. While Harry was reacquainting himself with the waking world, Hermione took the liberty of rifling through his closet until she found a suitable shirt and tossed it to him.

"Put that on," she ordered, and he did, ruefully. "And get a jacket, as well. It's going to be cold."

"I thought they got rid of the dementors?"

"It's still a frigid island in the middle of the North Sea, Harry," Hermione said with exasperation evident in her voice, and if only Ron were there it would have been like Hogwarts all over again. "And change into some decent trousers, too."

Harry tugged the edge of his Weird Sisters shirt downward and looked at her. "Well."

"Well what?"

"I don't care how close we are, Hermione, but I'm not changing into my trousers while you're in the room."

Hermione blushed and exited Harry's bedroom with a meek apology. She scowled at the sound of his chuckle and went to the kitchen. To her great surprise, the boys had milk that wasn't out of date (Harry must have gone shopping), and they always had loads of cereal, so while Harry was making himself decent Hermione grabbed the milk carton and poured a bowl of cereal for him, since she knew he would be a royal pain if he didn't eat. Not like Ron, but she didn't want to have to leave Azkaban because the Boy Who Lived's stomach was growling too loudly for him to pay attention to his surroundings.

"I'm hungry," Harry complained as he hopped into the kitchen, one leg in the air as he attempted to put a sock on his foot while walking.

"I made you cereal." She sat down at the table with the morning paper and unfolded it. "Eat up. We don't have much time."

"Jesus, you really sound like Mrs. Weasley sometimes," Harry muttered, and he fell into his chair ungracefully, socks on both feet. He had picked up the spoon when he asked, in a typical Harry way, "Do you not want some?"

Hermione stopped halfway through rolling her eyes and focused on her paper. "As I said two minutes ago, O Boy Wonder, I already ate. I was planning on stealing a few spoonfuls of yours while you weren't looking."

"How very Slytherin of you."

"I made your breakfast. Stop complaining."

"That's a woman's proper place," Harry said in a faux-serious voice, and he dodged the business section as it flew towards his face. "Kidding! You really could lighten up, you know."

"Shut it, Potter, and give me your spoon."

Harry pushed the bowl towards her and she took a spoonful. "Have at it. _Accio jacket!"_

The esteemed savior of the wizarding world yelped as three jackets flew toward him and nearly knocked him out of his chair. With the dignified air befitting someone of his station, he scrambled out from the clutches of the villainous winter wear and nearly knocked over the table in the process.

"Harry, do be careful!"

Harry grinned as he held up his jacket. "There we go. Found it! I always forget to specify."

"Harry, details –"

"Details, details," he cut her off, and he waved his hand in the air. "Not important stuff. I get there in the end, don't I?"

Hermione wisely decided not to continue the subject and took another bite out of Harry's breakfast.

They left ten minutes later, mainly because Harry couldn't find his second trainer (it had been lodged behind the television, of all things, which had prevented it from being Summoned), and Hermione icily ignored him as they entered the Atrium of the Ministry of Magic. For his part, Harry seemed unperturbed and frequently checked his watch.

"We're going to be late," she stated bluntly as they entered one of the lifts. "Stop checking your watch."

"I'm not checking the time," he answered. "Just seeing how much time is left before you inevitably realize that I'm an idiot teenage boy and you're wasting your time getting mad at me."

Hermione laughed.

They'd almost reached Level Nine when Harry swore and conjured a flying memo and a quill, scribbling something down on it hastily and then sending it off on Level Seven.

"What was that?" Hermione asked, curious.

"A note for Percy," Harry replied, staring at the metal paneling in front of them. "He has some forms that the department needs filled out."

Hermione accepted his answer – Percy _would_ be at the Ministry on a Sunday – and the door of the lift opened.

"Speaking of which, did you remember –" she lowered her voice "– the item?"

"Yes," Harry said, stepping out after her. "In my back left pocket."

She hurried down the corridor, Harry loping along in her wake, and was about to reach the door to the Department of Mysteries when someone stepped out of the shadows and grabbed her shoulder. She flinched and glanced to the left, only to see Babbling's still form crashing to the ground.

"Who is that?" Harry demanded, his wand drawn and voice husky.

"That's the Unspeakable," Hermione replied. "And you just attacked her."

Harry waved his wand and Babbling struggled to get to her feet, finally doing so with Hermione's help. Only when she'd grabbed the woman by the wrists and tugged her upward did Hermione realize just how short she was, although her cold air made her seem a sight taller.

"Nice wandwork, Mr. Potter," Babbling murmured as she brushed off her robe. "Happily, I am a fully developed adult who can take a strong Stunner and even try to deflect it. We are only fortunate that you did not accidentally concuss a small child due to your spastic trigger finger."

"I find it unfortunate that you like to pop out of corners to scare people," Harry replied nastily. "Excuse me if a year on the run taught me to take my friend's security extremely seriously."

"That's enough," said Hermione, and Harry closed his mouth, although he didn't look happy about it. "I'm sorry for the mix-up, Ms. Babbling. As you may have guessed, this is Harry Potter. Harry, this is Florence Babbling. She'll be taking us to Azkaban today."

"I have no intention of pressing charges," said Babbling. "She merely means that I am escorting you to Azkaban for academic purposes."

Harry cocked an eyebrow. "Yeah, I kind of got that already. Hermione might have mentioned it once or twice."

"Stop it, Harry." With a glare she silenced any further smarmy barbs. "Ms. Babbling, I assume we are taking the exit near the courtrooms?"

"Of course. It is the most expedient way to travel to Azkaban."

Hermione nodded, and Babbling led the three to the staircase bridging Level Nine, which had been where Babbling had launched her "attack" from. Level Ten was dimly lit, as usual, and none of the courtrooms seemed to be occupied.

"Do you make it down here much, Harry?" she asked. "I do, being legal counsel and all, but I wasn't sure about trainees, or even Aurors."

"Occasionally, to see some testimony," Harry's answer came from behind her. "But not a terrible lot since the few weeks after the war."

They continued along the hallway, past each heavy-set door, and finally past Courtroom Ten (Harry's footsteps slowed for the briefest of moments before returning to their usual pace). The last door on the hallway was unlike the others: instead of a wooden door with iron bolts, there was a metal door with no discernible lock or keyhole and only a slide for a guard's eyes to peek through.

Babbling rapped her knuckles against the door. Soon after the slide drew back.

"Florence Babbling, accompanying Hermione Granger and Harry Potter to Azkaban," she announced.

"You didn't tell me she had a voice like sandpaper," Harry whispered into Hermione's ear, and his corresponding yelp of pain was overpowered by the guard's rich baritone.

"Proceed, Ms. Babbling."

The door was thrown back, and the three stepped through, Harry favoring his right foot, which had been stomped on by an irritated witch moments prior. A small hall continued for a meter and fed into a large circular room with a spire in the middle. Bars of six feet in length protruded from the spire, about ten in all, and each proceeded into the room and grabbed hold of a different bar.

"I'm sending you through," stated the guard. The room went dark. "Three, two, one…"

There was a horrible dizzy feeling and then Hermione landed, almost crashing into Harry and only staying on her feet with the aid of his reflexes. Babbling appeared to have had no problem with the transfer and was surveying her surroundings curiously.

"The tide is low today," she said, staring out at the sea twenty feet below them. She looked at them and must have noticed the uncomfortable expressions on their faces, for she continued, "Ah, the Portkey link does take a little getting used to. If you are ready, we may continue."

"I'm fine," Hermione mumbled, and Harry's hand guided her to the narrow pathway they would have to climb. The pathway jutted upward, a narrow bridge of rock ascending higher and higher over tumultuous seas, until it finally met the island black as charcoal and the subtle gate built into the cliff wall.

There were guards outside this gate, two of them in navy blue robes, and when the trio moved toward the gate, the pair stepped in front of them.

"Halt," ordered the taller one, tapping his wand against his palm like a Muggle bobby's nightstick. "State your business here."

"Academic research on the Negative Level," Babbling replied, her voice equally cool.

"Do you have clearance?"

Babbling tutted under her breath. "Our group consists of an Unspeakable, the Minister's closest aide, and the Boy Who Lived. So yes, it would seem rational to assume that we have clearance."

The guard's eyes widened and Hermione had the impression that for the first time he had looked past the diminutive Unspeakable and seen the two teenagers standing behind her. To his credit, he quickly regained his composure and responded, "Clearance granted. Open her up!"

They waited and nothing happened. Babbling glanced from guard to guard, neither betraying an emotion, and Hermione wondered if the guards had noticed that the gate hadn't opened or were just playing a practical joke on them.

"Come," said Babbling, and the beckoned for the other two to follow her. Harry was about to open his mouth to retort when Babbling stepped forward and through the iron-wrought gate, much as she had two days prior into the room containing the Ministry's antimagic.

"Oh," he said finally, and they followed after her.

The interior of the prison was cramped and poorly lit. Torches carrying blue flame provided the main source of light, although there was a strange glow to the ground that Hermione couldn't place. Twenty feet inside the corridor stopped and transformed into a circular room with a guard sitting on a platform carved into an alcove ten feet above the flooring.

"State your purpose," he commanded in a much less self-serious tone than the other guard had.

"We wish to visit the Negative Level."

The guard hesitated for a moment but nodded. "The Negative Level it is. You may keep your wands, and it is recommended that you maintain the highest level of vigilance during your visit."

"Noted."

The guard seemed to begin to float, or the walls around them seemed to rise, until Hermione realized that the floor was actually sinking. She'd never been to Azkaban, but so far the magic demonstrated had moderately impressed her, despite the prison's bloody history.

"I don't care what anyone says," Harry murmured beside her, "but this place is still effing creepy even without the dementors guarding it."

Hermione was inclined to agree.

Hermione braced herself as the floor came to a sudden and jarring halt. Babbling motioned for them to follow and they proceeded out of the chamber and into a cramped, narrow tunnel of a hallway with a light source that wasn't readily apparent. The tunnel ended and opened up into a cavernous room with another guard at the mouth of the entrance.

"Florence Babbling with Harry Potter and Hermione Granger," Babbling said without preamble.

"I know who you are and why you're here," replied the guard, a tall woman with a thin face. "I trust that you know all of the necessary precautions and won't do anything to endanger the shield."

"We won't," Babbling said. "We may use the mass for negating purposes, but no matter what we intend to leave the shield in place."

The guard nodded. "Proceed with caution."

They pressed forward, forced to step around a cluster of stalagmites in the middle of the room to move on, and Babbling stopped them with an outstretched arm. There was a buzzing sound inches in front of them, and Babbling's voice scratched out of the darkness: "The shield. It would be remarkably unwise to move any further."

"Will we be able to reach through to the antimagic and extract any of it if we need to?" Hermione asked.

The guard stepped away from her post with a raised arm. "That is not advisable –"

"Of course it's not advisable, but it can be done safely," responded Hermione sharply. She glanced back to Babbling. "Right?"

"Yes," the Unspeakable finally said, "if it is absolutely necessary."

"Good. Now, since we cannot go any further, this seems like a wonderful time to talk more about antimagic and everything else we didn't have time to talk about the other day."

Hermione ignored Harry's sarcastic mutter of "Exciting," and steeled her gaze toward Babbling, who nodded again and turned to the thin air in front of them.

"If you look closely, you can see the antithetical matter," Babbling stated. "Notice that – the areas where the light is distorted and reflected?"

"It's dark," said Harry. "And… wow, that's a lot. It's what, fifteen feet across?"

"Seventeen," the guard answered. "And we don't know how deep. The cave goes on behind it."

"Why is it here?" Hermione demanded. "Why not in Coventry or Buckingham Palace or Tahiti? Why does it pick this individual location to form?"

"That is an interesting and incredibly essential question." Babbling reached out her hand and grazed the air in front of her with her fingers, before pulling them back as if stung. "You mentioned Mr. Lupin's views on antithetical matter. I foolishly neglected to ask you if Mr. Lupin had ever encountered it in person."

"He did, from what he wrote. He encountered it on a trip with Albus Dumbledore and Tiberius Ogden to Nurmengard."

"Oh! Yeah, I've seen that one," Harry exclaimed, the loudness of his voice startling the other two.

"Seen what, Harry?"

"The Pensieve memory," he elaborated. "It looked like this, actually. It's been months, though… it was the first one I watched, actually. I was looking to just see some of my parents and Sirius and Remus together but one of the ones on top was labeled 'Nurmengard '94' and I decided to watch it. It was pretty creepy. Dumbledore was strengthening some shield or something."

Hermione felt very stupid for not thinking of viewing Remus's Pensieve memories. "Of course! I can't believe it – you even told me I could view some with you…"

"Well, in your defense, I didn't bring it up when you told me about this trip," said Harry rather sheepishly. "I mean, I don't know if they ever referred to the stuff by name. I think they did, but I didn't really care about the particulars. It was just… Dumbledore and Grindelwald, you know? And they were in a cave and Dumbledore looked so weak, and it reminded me – sixth year…"

"Oh," said Hermione with unyielding eloquence. "Oh. I'm sorry, Harry."

"Let us focus on our work here for the time being," said Babbling in a cross voice, and Hermione faced back toward the Unspeakable. "Thank you. But please remind yourself of the places you know that have encountered antithetical matter."

"There's Azkaban, of course, and then Nurmengard," Hermione said, ticking the two off on her fingers. "And… and, now that I think about it, Charleston-on-the-Avon."

"Precisely. And what, pray tell, do those locales have in common?"

"Nothing geographically – Azkaban and Nurmengard are both islands but Charleston-on-the-Avon isn't, and I doubt water is a factor. The only thing I can say is…" Her eyes lit up. "Wait. Azkaban is a prison and has been the home of dementors and the destruction of souls and people going insane and being miserable, and torture used to be quite common, as well as executions. Nurmengard was infamous for all of those things, save the dementors, but the tortures there are legendary. And Charleston-on-the-Avon – that was the site of the largest massacre of the entire war."

"Yes, and these are only the tip of the iceberg," Babbling said. "We've spent years tracking down leads on possible sources of antithetical matter, and all of the sources have a similar history. The dominating trend among the data was a history of violence and bloodshed, and our own, ah, inquiries into the matter have led us to conclude that antimagic is born out of the abuse of violent and dark magic, a conclusion that we have only grown surer of due to the recent war."

"But dark magic's been used for ages," Hermione argued. "Antimagic should be much more prevalent than it is. And that doesn't even begin to explain why it actually forms."

"You'd be surprised at the levels of dark magic performed over the past millennium. Our best research, performed over decades, has irrefutably proven, in our best judgment, that the usage of dark magic has actually multiplied two times as fast as any other type of magic. Dark magic has the advantage of being exceptionally easy to perform and create, since it is a magic that relies on pure, easily accessible emotions that every human has. As for the reasons antithetical matter forms…"

Babbling shrugged. "Now we enter the realm of speculation, but our best speculation has, in the past, proven to be as good as fact. From our experiments and inquiries, the brutal dark magic actually changes the area around it. That's actually how dark magic is defined – magic that destroys or alters the surrounding magical atmosphere in a negative way. Light magic tends to promote magical growth; dark magic the opposite. But when dark magic is combined with extreme violence, something changes. The magic, being dark in nature, feeds off of the violence and becomes strengthened, and the magical environment is exceptionally more disturbed than it would have been otherwise."

"That explains very little."

"No, I think it explains very much," Babbling replied, tone cool. "Antithetical matter is the conversion of the energy manipulated and altered into a dense mass. At its heart it is a conversion of energy - _that_ is the result of this violent, incredibly dark magic. Antithetical matter is born out of that destruction of the magical atmosphere of an area, and it has a tendency to accumulate and to seek out magic. It is essentially negative magic – hence the colloquial term 'antimagic' – and as such can be negated by extremely large sources of magic."

"What about Horcruxes?" Harry asked quietly. "Horcruxes are extremely dark, and they require violence in cold blood. They actually rip souls apart. Would they cause antimagic to form?"

"That's a very good question, and one I can't fully answer. Horcruxes are perhaps the darkest magic known to man, and as such we have considered the question, but we have no evidence as of yet, which even our most curious Unspeakables appreciate, as Horcruxes are terrible misappropriations of magic. There are different camps on the issue. For my part, I tend to think that Horcruxes would not cause the formation of antithetical matter, as the very destructive brunt of the dark magic is given a specific target: the soul, which is extremely hard to bend or tear in such a fashion that it doesn't leave the individual completely incapable of normal everyday functions."

"All right, let's assume for the moment that I take your theories on antimagic as fact," said Hermione, shivering. Harry placed a hand on her shoulder without thinking. "Explain to me the Muggle-born crisis. Muggle-born fertility is falling faster than any other figure in the wizarding population."

"As I've previously said, I believe your friend Mr. Lupin was right in many of his assumptions," said Babbling. "This area of study is much surer than the question of antithetical matter, so I hope you will take my word as scientific fact rather than the rambling of a diminutive old woman. We have proven, through direct observational studies, that magic is not simply genetic, and that an environmental presence is necessary. From what we can tell, magic is genetic in some sense, but the gene – or genes – necessary require some sort of 'activation' from the environment, or a necessary level of contact with magic or magical residue that latches onto the susceptible gene and mutates it, which then allows for a person's magical core to develop. Generally, we have found that more powerful wizards seem to have been 'activated' at a younger development phase as a fetus, due to either a more susceptible combination of genes or a greater level of environmental magic, and that the time in the womb is the most important time of magical development next to puberty.

"Many of his theories about – what did he call it? – 'old magic' are correct as well. For centuries wizards have been positively idiotic about their usage of wards and long-term spells, and at some point we reached a breaking point where there was a sudden and volatile change in the amount of clustered environmental magic in Britain, and most worryingly, the rate of magical deterioration hasn't abetted. Also, antithetical matter has a profound effect: large clusters of antithetical matter radically alter the environment around them and actually appear to reverse the flow of magical gravity, so that magic drifts apart rather than together, which has sped up the process. There are other factors," she said, taking a breath for the first time in minutes (Hermione thought), "but those are the ones to which we give the most weight and consideration."

"So to start, we need to somehow find a way to prevent the dispersal of magic through the drift from areas of old magic," Hermione began, her mind working at a furious pace, "and then we also need to find a way to contain and destroy antithetical matter, while preventing it from being created in the first place."

"In a word… yes."

Harry let out a low whistle and his thumb rubbed Hermione's shoulder spontaneously. "Sounds tricky. I don't know about you, Hermione, but I figure I've done my bit for society. If you want to tackle this, I'll always be a shoulder to cry on, but I don't think I've got the mind for this."

"Nonsense – your mind is perfectly fine," Hermione said distractedly. She bit her lip. "Ms. Babbling – Florence – when we negated that small amount of antimagic, what happened to it?"

"The antithetical matter was negated, of course," Babbling replied as if it had not been a very intelligent question.

"Ah, not the antimagic. I mean, what happened to the magic inside the object?"

"Oh. Well, at its core, another energy conversion occurred, and the magic contained by the object and the magic distorted by the antithetical matter are dispersed into the environment."

"So there's no loss of environmental magic when antimagic is negated?"

"No," answered Babbling. "There's actually a gain, theoretically speaking, although we've never been able to negate a significant enough quantity of the matter to make any mathematical verifications."

The shield shimmered for a moment and the black mass became fleetingly visible, and then the darkness returned. Hermione's eyes remained focused on where the blob of antimagic had briefly appeared before she turned to Harry.

"Harry," she croaked with a hoarse voice, "I need it. It's time."

Harry reached into his left back pocket and withdrew a wand, poorly lit in the dim lighting of the cavern, and held it out for Hermione to take.

"Grab it," he muttered. "I don't want it any longer than I have to hold it."

She nodded and shuddered as her fingers closed around the shaft of the wand. She could feel the raw power emanating from it, felt like she could do anything with it. But she couldn't. She was not its master, and it would not answer to her. But hopefully, soon enough, it would have no master, and would never answer to anyone again.

"What's that?" asked Babbling, breathless.

"It is," Hermione said, picking her words carefully, "a wand of considerable power. I was interested to see how it would affect the antimagic."

"You're not going to do anything with it, are you?" came the guard's worried voice. "It's volatile. I really don't think you should mess with it."

"I thank you for the display of legally mandated concern, but truth be told, I know more about this than you ever will," responded Babbling coldly, "and I think that is an absolutely _fascinating_ idea. It is," she said, turning to Hermione, "of much greater power than an ordinary wand, I hope?"

"Much greater."

"Good. If you will…"

Hermione hesitated with the wand in her hand. She could understand its draw now; now that it was in her hand she never wanted to let it go. But Harry nodded and she let Babbling take the wand, and the Unspeakable let out a short breath.

"Incredible," she whispered. Her eyes flitted to the two teenagers. "Wands out, please. The magical runoff could be rather extreme, depending on the power of the wand."

The two obliged, and with her free hand Babbling picked up another large stick with a protruding claw and grabbed the wand with the claw. Slowly, she led the claw of the stick toward the shield with both her hands on the shaft of the staff, and as the wand passed the shield the guard let out another breathy warning.

"Are you absolutely certain of this? We've never done anything like this."

"Not certain at all, my compatriot," Babbling replied, "but this should be quite entertaining either way, shouldn't it?"

The claw moved forward. The wand was inches now from the black mass – the cave seemed to glow – an inch now – centimeters – Hermione's skin tingled –

Alabaster wood met jet black antimagic and the buzzing in the air stopped. Harry's breath caught next to her and then the cave roared.

If the cavern had been dark before, now it was lit up as if provided with a thousand newborn suns. The antimagic, once black, now shone a strong white with blue and purple wrinkles and spots, and the wand wasn't visible at all, enveloped by the substance. Only now did Hermione see how far back the mass of antimagic extended, and how deep the cave was. Wind seemed to rush into the cave, and there was another moment of silence before the natural progression occurred and the wind rushed out.

Harry fell back into her and Hermione tried to catch him, but it was largely a useless affair. Harry finally stuck his foot against the stalagmite and braced her back with his hand and hip, and Babbling flattened against the wall to the eastern side. Hermione whipped her wand in the air and tried to conjure a shield, but nothing happened, as if all the magic had been sucked from her.

Hermione didn't know how long it was until the roaring stopped, but her temples pounded with pain at the end of it, and she was vaguely aware that her head rested against Harry's shoulder. Babbling had been knocked off her feet and was glancing around dizzily, and she could hear the guard curse at the entrance to the cave.

The cavern was dark now, but slowly the light returned and the shield shone weakly in front of them. Hermione pointed her wand forward and hacked out, _"Lumos,"_ but nothing happened. Again she tried and again she failed. She suddenly worried that she had gone too far; that she had suffered the fate of Errolan Jones; that she had lost her magic, something she'd never thought possible to lose, her entire life…

There was a warm rush to her head and she felt Harry shiver behind her.

"Did you feel that?" he breathed.

"Yes," she said.

He placed his hand on her forearm and pointed her wand hand upward. "Try again."

"_Lumos,"_ she said without giving herself time to doubt her ability, and a bright light shone from the tip of her wand.

At first she thought her eyes were tricking her. But no, she blinked, and there it was again. Where there had been a large mass of antimagic behind the shield, now there were only patches on the ground, no more than puddles. And the wand lay on the ground, still white as bone.

"Can you get the wand…?"

But Babbling was already on her feet and with the staff in hand. Slowly and deliberately she pierced the shield and dragged the wand back to the other side of the shield. She groped and scraped it off the ground, looked at it, and then tossed it to Hermione, who quite nearly didn't catch it.

"Try," said Babbling simply.

Hermione handed the wand to Harry. His eyes narrowed and his mouth twisted in an unpleasant manner, and he shouted, _"LUMOS!"_

No light formed.

"Maybe your… try the other wand," muttered Hermione.

Harry did, and his spell lit up the room. He drew out the other wand and tried again but there was nothing.

"The wand is dead," he said, a grim note of satisfaction evident in his voice.

"You sound pleased," said Babbling.

"Of course I'm pleased," Harry replied. "This means that no one has any reason to assassinate me just so they can be master of the Elder Wand."

"The Elder – but that's myth!"

Harry just frowned and he tossed the wand back at the Unspeakable. "It's not. That's how I defeated Voldemort. You can have it. I don't want it anymore."

Babbling's eyes widened appreciatively and she pocketed the now dead Elder Wand.

"It's gone, then," Hermione stated, struggling to speak. "The antimagic. We've released the magic."

"You think?" the guard snorted sarcastically. "I heard you were bright, too. Or did you not see the big white flash and all that wind?"

Harry threw her a glare and the guard promptly shut up.

"Yes, I think that worked," Babbling said, smiling. Hermione noticed with a twinge of something unfamiliar that Babbling's smile was actually quite attractive – serene, even. "It's an interesting method. I'm not sure if we can find anything quite as powerful as the Elder Wand, but we hadn't ever had anything that powerful to work with. Pure magical injection into antimagic is too difficult, especially with the shields; but creating a magical object, a conduit, is a wonderful idea that I'm ashamed we hadn't considered more seriously and not just as an experimental tool. This," she chuckled, "will be included in my report."

Hermione smiled back. "Good."

It was two in the afternoon when they returned to the Ministry, and Harry stopped in with Percy to talk on their way back to the Atrium. Hermione waited politely outside for the men to finish their conversation, and Harry smiled at her as he exited and led her to the Atrium, where they took the Muggle exit out and dined at a pleasant Muggle pizzeria nearby.

They steadfastly ignored the events of the day for the most part, although Harry tried to express his gratitude for the destruction of the Elder Wand on several occasions only to be shushed by Hermione ("What? You only might have saved my life, you know.").

"So how are things with you and Ginny?" Hermione asked as Harry tucked into his third slice of pepperoni-and-olive pizza.

"Fine," he said, and he took a large bit out of the crust, leaving the slice lopsided. Hermione frowned. "I mean, we really don't know what we are or what we're doing, but we're talking and being friends and eventually we'll probably move forward. I just… I mean, I wanted to get together with her after the war, but the last year was too different for both of us. I'm not the same, and neither is she. So we recognized that and we're friends."

"I know. You've been _friends_ for a long time."

"There's no rush," he replied breezily. "I don't feel the need to move into a serious relationship yet. I haven't been ready for a while. I think I almost am. I think, and Ginny would agree with this, that we've just spent the last few months trying to scale back our stress and that we weren't ready to deal with moving onto a relationship yet. But I think I'm about there. I don't know."

Hermione gazed sleepily at a crow roosting on an overhanging branch and took a sip of her iced tea. "Do you love her?"

"I thought I did." He bit out another part of the crust and peppered the pizza with paprika. "I didn't, though. It was just happiness from feeling normal for a few months before Dumbledore died. But I think I can love her. I think I could. Maybe it's not a problem of loving her, more of a problem with being in love with her. And I think we're both almost ready for that."

"That's good," Hermione said.

"It is."

Hermione nibbled at her salad. Harry glanced back and forth, set down the slice and murmured, "Ron gets back tomorrow."

"That's good," Hermione said. Harry nodded and ate his pizza, and Hermione watched the birds fly by with an unusual sense of contentment.

Harry accompanied her back to her flat, claiming that he wanted to borrow one of her books for something or other (she was too content to question him), and he waited patiently for her to unlock the front door. The flat was dark as they entered, and when Hermione flipped the light switch she was met with a loud roar.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!"

She stared, stunned, at the bevy of people in front of her. Mainly Weasleys and her parents, but Neville was there, and even Kingsley as well, along with McGonagall, who had evidently made it out from Hogwarts to visit.

"I – I," she stammered.

"You forgot," said Harry with a grin.

"I thought it was tomorrow," she eventually said.

"Of course Hermione forgets her own birthday," George stated loudly so that everyone could hear. "Thankfully Harry didn't. And your wards are a pain, by the way. Harry and I spent the better part of last night working on them. We had to call over Bill to help us."

"You broke into my wards?" Hermione spluttered.

"Expanded them," Harry answered. "Wouldn't have been able to, but I cosigned on the flat, remember? They still were a royal pain."

"Oh dear," Mrs. Weasley said happily, "you all just grow up so fast!"

George rolled his eyes and faked sobbing. Mrs. Weasley slapped him on the arm and he hid behind an armchair.

She spent a time eating cake (even though she was already full) and opening presents in the company of the others, and she honestly couldn't remember the last time she'd had so much fun. She was just Hermione now, just another friend and member of the family, and her dad (still sporting a nice Australian tan) spent much of the time telling embarrassing stories about her as a baby and Hermione spent much of the time blushing and denying everything he said.

"Nice get-together," said Kingsley next to her at the table as she grabbed another slice of cake for herself and her mother to share. "Your mother is lovely."

"She is," Hermione agreed. "By the way – I went to Azkaban today with Florence Babbling and Harry, and you'll never believe the results. The Unspeakables are giving you a report in two weeks, I know, but really the results were astounding, and I really think I should report on some of them sooner –"

"Hermione, relax," Kingsley cut in, his voice low and amused. "It's a Sunday. It's your birthday. You've done enough for ten years. Today I'm here to celebrate with you and enjoy the company of good friends. Tomorrow I promise I'll be your prick of a boss again and drive you to your last wit. Do we have an accord?"

Hermione gaped at him and then finally laughed and said, "That sounds great."

"Good. Now what's this I hear about you and falling off a horse…?"

When almost everyone had left, George and Harry remained behind to clean up, loudly proclaiming that since they'd invaded her privacy it was the least they could do to help her fix her flat back up. She tried to help, but they threatened her with violence if she moved a muscle, and so she sat back on the couch and watched them return the flat to its former mundane glory and exchange jokes.

When Harry was in the toilet, George lifted something from underneath the coffee table and discreetly handed it to Hermione, cleaning the top of a shelf as he did so.

"What's this?"

"Open it," he said.

It was a plain brown package, and she ripped open the brown paper and took out what lay inside. On top was a letter, written in familiar scrawl, and it read:

_Sorry I couldn't be there for the big day. I bet you forgot anyway, didn't you? Typical._

_I've got another actual present for you, but I got this as a peace offering for missing your birthday. I'm thinking about you. Don't tell anyone I said that, especially not George. I hope he didn't read this._

_I'm back Monday – tomorrow when you get this. And I'll want to talk to you. Dinner?_

_Ron._

Underneath lay three lilies and a huge box of sugar-free candy. Hermione grinned.

"What is it?" Harry asked as he shuffled out of the bathroom, buckling up his belt.

Hermione said nothing and placed the candy on the shelf, the lilies in a vase, and the letter in her pocket, humming a tune she'd never heard before.


	8. Solutions

This is the final chapter. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it; I hope my ideas were clear to the point of some basic understanding and that whatever you didn't understand you cared enough to daydream about for a minute or two (something I did a lot of, and still do when I find myself updating this: let's just say I've forgotten and relearned the idea of antimagic dozens of times already, with dozens more to come). I have to say that this has garnered some of the most quality reviews I've ever had, and I hope that this made you think, made you laugh, or possibly, just once maybe, made your day, as writing has made many of mine.

* * *

"Solutions."

-

"Dora? Where'd you leave the milk?"

"His container's by the sink," came Dora's lilting voice from the living room. "It should be full."

Remus scoured the expanse of countertop near the sink and quickly located the container in question, nabbing it triumphantly and placing the nipple against the baby's mouth. The baby tentatively began sucking on it and he tilted the bottle up so the transfer was easier.

"Did you get it?"

"Yes, thanks, love," he called back. Teddy Lupin stopped gulping down milk and let out a weak burp, then closed his eyes and rested his head against Remus's palm, content to sleep. Remus grinned and muttered to himself, "Well that was easy."

He carried the infant into the living room and took a seat next to Dora on the sofa, Teddy cradled between them, squirming and then settling back into a content slumber. Dora looked up from her book and gave Remus a quick peck on the lips, and she nestled her head against his shoulder, letting out a hum of contentment.

"Where's your mother?" Remus whispered.

"She was in the office last I saw. I don't know."

"I'm right here." Andromeda sifted into the room, wireless in hand, and set it down on the table, taking a seat in an armchair near the window. "_Potterwatch_ is supposed to be on soon."

She leaned closer to the radio, twiddled the dial, and murmured, _"Sirius."_

The wireless buzzed for a few minutes, but they waited patiently, Dora reading and Teddy sleeping and Remus enjoying the feeling of his immediate family so close to him. Andromeda sat with her eyes closed, and then the radio crackled to life.

"Hello, ladies and gentlemen, this is River speaking for _Potterwatch_," said Lee Jordan through the wireless receiver. Remus noticed how tired his former student sounded. "We've got exciting news on this Easter day for all the listeners. While there have been rumors that Harry Potter has been captured or has died, special contributor Reverend is here to tell us more on the situation. Reverend, take it away."

"Thanks, River," said Bill Weasley's welcome voice. "While I can't get into specifics, I have it from extremely reliable sources that Harry Potter, as of recently, was safe and well, and actively resisting and evading Death Eaters. It's also apparent that Harry's had some scuffles with Death Eaters and has escaped multiple times, and so far You-Know-Who has been completely unsuccessful in bringing in our favorite fugitive, and you know the slimy greaseball would be tearing out his hair right now if he had any. I'm afraid I can't report much more, although I would like to note that the free house elf Dobby died fighting off Death Eaters and helping prisoners escape."

"And our thoughts are with Dobby and other brave warriors," Lee added somberly. "Now I'd like to address some more of the rumors about You-Know-Who floating around out there. Number one: His Holy Darkness is _not_ an alien. I don't know why we've been getting this so much recently, but while he's not entirely human anymore, probably, he's definitely not from Mars. Seriously, folks."

"I would like to elaborate and also mention that You-Know-Who is not a ghost and can be hurt," Bill said. "It's just… rather difficult to do that."

"Indeed. And while we're on the topic, Harry Potter isn't the Dark Lord's son."

"Ew," Dora muttered, and Remus smiled. Andromeda's mouth twitched.

"_Star Wars_," Remus said, but Dora didn't seem to understand the reference. Andromeda, however, smiled back.

"Ted loved that," she said, and she stopped talking abruptly. Remus felt Dora shiver against him and wrapped his arm around her tightly. Teddy snored.

"Back to basic tips on protection," Lee was saying. "As we all know, Fenrir Greyback and his wolfy buddies are running around the country causing mayhem, and people aren't quite sure what to do about a gang of ruffian smelly werewolves. Not that we're insinuating that all werewolves are smelly: some have a positively professorial smell, really…"

"River…"

"Sorry, Reverend." Dora giggled and Andromeda let out a chuckle and the atmosphere relaxed. "Anyway, the best restraints against werewolves are a mix of physical precautions, magical prudence, and sheer logic. One of the most important and undervalued things that can help protect you from an unannounced werewolf attack is keeping yourself clean and odorless. Werewolves, even in human form, have a distinct sense of smell that helps them track their prey. So if you're carrying around garlic to protect yourself from vampires, stop it, because not only is garlic shite against vampires, it's also going to make you an easy target for Greyback and his buddies."

"I'd like to add a note on Fenrir Greyback," Bill stated with an undertone of steel. "While Greyback is an extremely powerful and violent werewolf, he can be defeated, much like his master. Greyback relies on fear and brutality to overpower his foes, and if you ever encounter Greyback or any of his allies, it's important to remember this. While magic is weaker against him than normal wizards, it can still be effective, but you have to remember that Greyback relies on his strength rather than his magical ability. If you encounter him, physical spells and Transfiguration are your safest bets – you want spells that will distract a werewolf and physically hurt them apart from their resistance to magic. And," he snarled, "I'd personally like to shake the hand of the person that finally brings that bastard down."

Remus ran his hand across Teddy's small tuft of hair and nodded, eyes squeezed shut and childhood memories flooding his mind. The forest… the attack… the screaming… he opened his eyes and forced himself to think of something else.

"Remus…"

"I'm fine, Dora," he said, and he kissed the top of her head, her hair a pleasant shade of pink today and soft as down. "I'm fine."

"You're not like him, Remus," she whispered. "What he did to you doesn't make you any less of a man."

"I know." He glanced at his son. "I'm just glad that Teddy doesn't have to deal with my Achilles Heel."

Andromeda, to her credit, acted as if she had become overtly interested in _Potterwatch_ and gave the couple some privacy, and Remus was endlessly thankful to her for her graciousness.

"I'm going to go get lunch started," Dora said, slowly disentangling herself from her husband and rising from the sofa. Remus groaned in protest, but she just ruffled his hair and skipped into the kitchen, and Teddy whined along with his father.

"I know, Teddy. Women are such teases."

"I heard that, Lupin!"

Remus grinned at Andromeda and tickled Teddy's cheek.

"I've got a basket for him in the other room," Andromeda said, the wireless quite forgotten. "Obviously, he can't exactly eat candy yet, but it still is quite pretty."

"I think that'd be nice," Remus replied. He held Teddy's wrists together, leaning close to his son's neck. "What do you think, Teddy? Do you want to celebrate your first Easter proper?"

Teddy gurgled and Andromeda rose from her chair, chuckling. "I'll go get the basket."

Dora cursed from the kitchen but Remus was too happy to castigate her for her carelessness around the baby. When Andromeda returned with a basket of flowers and painted eggs, Remus was doubly pleased, and he only argued for a moment when she insisted on pinning bunny ears onto his head.

"Aw, aren't you the most dashing Easter Bunny in the history of the holiday," Dora cooed as she brought in three plates of pasta (one of the few dishes they trusted her with). "With butter and extra salt, darling. And Mum, we're out of pepper, sorry."

Remus moved over so his wife could sit down next to him again, and they ate in contented silence. Teddy wanted to play with his father's pasta, and Remus was inclined to let him, but Dora pushed the boy's hands away and sent her husband a stern look.

"Sorry," Remus muttered.

"Softie," Dora retorted. She paused and stared at him and then at Teddy, and she drew out her wand and pointed it to Teddy's head. "Teddy's not dressed up. Well, Teddy, would you like to be a bunny today?"

Teddy sneezed.

"I think that's a no," Remus said wryly.

"Right," said Dora. She smirked at him. "Hm. Teddy, would you like to dress up like your daddy today?"

Teddy waved his hands together as if clapping, and Dora beamed at him.

"What –"

"Shush, Remus." She waved her wand and Teddy had grown wolf ears and had a button nose attached to his own. She tickled his belly. "You're a cute little wolf, aren't you? Your father's a cute little wolf, too. Hopefully you'll be less of a stubborn old berk than he is sometimes."

Remus's heart caught at the sight of his son as a wolf, but then he took a breath and reminded himself that it was all right, that Teddy was healthy and normal. And he relaxed.

"Yes, I am," he said. Dora glanced up at him questioningly, but he smiled back. "Your mother's an overeager young hotshot, as well, but we love each other so it works out all right."

After lunch Dora went for a bath, and Remus went back to their bedroom to read on the bed with Teddy in his lap. But for some reason it was hard for him to concentrate; he half-consciously flicked Teddy's ears and lost himself in thought. He closed his eyes and thought he was dreaming, but this was better than a dream, and more real too.

"C'mon, Harry." Ron stood on a foggy platform, older but still with a reckless smile, and Hermione stood at his side. Nameless, faceless children stood next to them, and he saw Harry. He was less of a boy and more of a man, but what struck Remus most was how happy he looked. "You've been slow all day."

"And you've been impatient all day," Harry said, but he was smiling.

And then the images flashed. He saw Draco Malfoy respectfully tip his head at the trio; he saw Neville Longbottom, surrounded by adoring children; he saw Minerva McGonagall sternly reprimanding a young witch. He saw Hagrid and the Weasleys and Kingsley Shacklebolt, and he saw a young bushy-haired witch sit down to a Malfoy without incident. He saw endless faces, endless possibilities, an endless future where people remembered Dobby the free elf and Grawp the giant and maybe even one or two brave werewolves.

He saw Dora, kneeled on one knee, speaking softly to a young boy with a roguish grin. He saw the love of his life and the best thing he'd ever created, and he did not see himself. He didn't see himself in this future, and he found that this revelation didn't move him. He saw his son happy, and his students happy, and his friends happy, and somehow that mattered more.

Remus opened his eyes. Teddy slept against his chest, and he slowly stood and placed the sleeping wolf in his crib. His desk was a mess of papers, but he knew the pile he was searching for and found it as he sat in his old chair. Taking up his quill, he flipped to the last page, read over a few paragraphs, and began to write.

_This is my final dissertation, or a preliminary version of the same. In the event I cannot finish, there is a brilliant young witch whom I believe may take up the good fight, and hopefully she will be able to correct my numerous instances of short-sightedness._

_So, since this is only a temporary place-holder, I see no reason why I shouldn't actually address it to my chosen successor, if she'll have the job. In short –_

_Hermione: I'm sorry to trouble you with the whims and fancies of a greyed man, but you're the only one I trust, and I can't imagine any of us will make it out of this alive if you don't, so you also seem like the safest option. This tract has been the work of twenty years of my life and it's still not close to completion, but I hope the framework is in place and that a more brilliant mind can use this foundation to form a more perfect conclusion._

_And my conclusion is thus:_

_The most important factor contributing to our most radical problems is the usage of spells – the manipulation of magic from its natural state. It's not spell usage itself that is bad, per se, but the unnatural and irresponsible twisting of magic._

_First, long-term wards. I feel like I've delved into this topic properly enough before, but this is one of the main causes of the drop in magical fertility, I fear._

_Second, violent and dark magic. While I can't prove it (I hope you are able to), I strongly believe that this is connected to the formation of antimagic. I wish I could elaborate more on how antimagic affects us or is changing our world, but I can't, because I don't know. All I know is that it's not good, and that I hope your answers are more complete._

_But I feel I am correct in saying that if we do not begin to fix these problems now, then our problems will be a hundredfold in merely ten years. We are living in the most dangerous era for a thousand years, and it's not just because of Voldemort. Our own arrogance and ignorance has conspired against us, and long after this war is over we shall be fighting a war of a different sort, a war of education and tolerance and, most importantly, moderation._

_If you are reading this, Hermione, I am sorry I could not finish the puzzle myself. But I do believe the pieces are in place, and you are the one with the breadth of mind to see the entire picture._

_Sincerely,_

_Remus J. Lupin_

_12 April, 1998_

He wrote for longer than he'd anticipated, and when he set down his quill he did so with a sense of closure he hadn't had in seventeen years. He turned in his chair and watched his son sleep. Something was different about him. He'd changed, and he was perfectly all right with the fact.

"Remus?"

Dora stood in the doorway, hair wet and bathrobe around her body. He took a moment to appreciate the flush of her cheeks, the hollow of her neck, the smoothness of her collarbone, and he smiled back.

"Yes, Dora?"

"Are you all right?"

"I'm perfect," he said honestly. He stood and opened his arms wide. "Come here."

She leaned forward into him and he wrapper his arms around her waist, breathing in deeply. She was warm and smelled of fresh grass and strawberries.

He lowered them onto the bed and curled up against her, his chest placed against her back and his forearm draped across her hip, his hand in hers.

She sighed. "You're a good man, Remus Lupin."

"Yes," he said, "it took me a while, but I think I finally am."

"You're a good father."

"It helps that I've got you." He kissed her shoulder. "I was so scared. I've been terrible. I've been a coward. I'm not that anymore. I'm happy with who I am. I don't entirely know why you love me but I've accepted that you do and I want you to love me. I want to be a father."

"That's why I love you, Remus," Dora said. "It's because I know how wonderful you can be once you stop being an idiot."

"Oh Dora, you have such a way with words…"

She giggled, and he kissed her again.

-

"As always, the economic report is highly appreciated and was especially fascinating today," said Kingsley in a dull voice as a pleased Percy Weasley took his seat at the weekly staff meeting. "As I understand it, Hermione Granger will speak to us now about concerns of population and also the usage of magic by the Ministry."

"Thank you, Minister," Hermione replied, and she stood at her seat around the table. Percy's report had deadened most of the room, she noted with a grim acceptance. "I will be mercifully brief, as you will receive much more information during your report from the Department of Mysteries, but the issue we speak of today is something that we should be extremely worried about, particularly if we are as dedicated to societal equality as we like to say we are. To be plain, the magical population in Britain is dwindling, largely because of the decline of pureblood families and even more so because of the disturbing drop in Muggle-born fertility rate.

"The truth is that we have been irresponsible in our usage of magic. We rely on old spells and wards to do our dirty work for us, and these old spells grow weaker every day. They grow weaker and allow magic to disperse when it should naturally gravitate, and this dispersal prevents the birth of magical children, both Muggle-born and pureblood, although the effect has been especially felt in the Muggle-born sector, one of the most vital demographics in regard to magical population.

"There are, of course, other, more disturbing factors – you might say the war's most devastating legacy – but I realize that the classification status of those factors is uncertain at this time and that it would probably be a job best left to Unspeakables," she finished apologetically. "To be short, the way we do things now isn't working, and if we continue on this path before long there's not going to be much of a wizarding world left. Like I said, the Department of Mysteries will give you a more comprehensive overview of the subject, and after that occurs we can begin talking about strategies going forward."

Kingsley sat with a blank face, but Hermione knew his mind was hard at work.

"Interesting," he finally said. "And do you believe this problem can be rectified with a cohesive policy?"

"Yes," she said. "I think it can. I would recommend, after a comprehensive briefing on the overarching problem by our colleagues from the Department of Mysteries, the creation of an expert team dedicated to the issue, with members ranging from Unspeakables to magical theorists to even Muggle scientists and government members, to determine how to battle the problem. But in theory, at least, the problem is incredibly solvable."

"Good, that's what I like to hear. And I'll consider your proposal after I've heard the report from the Department of Mysteries. Let's move on to the census…"

The meeting dragged on but in a sign that all was not wrong with the world it ended before two, and the staff slowly shifted out of the chamber, speaking in low tones to each other. Hermione waited for Kingsley to finish his conversation with Yarbet to approach him.

"Minister."

"Yes?" he said, eyebrow raised.

"I just wanted to inform you that I was planning on taking a week off," she replied. She paused. "Effective Monday."

"But we've got important constitutional meetings on Monday and Tuesday," Kingsley trailed off, frowning.

Hermione bit her lip so hard that it almost bled. "I know, but I just thought that maybe – I really have just been too focused in on certain things and I really…"

"The point, Hermione," Kingsley said.

"Yes. Well. I just thought that you could get by without me for a week, honestly."

Kingsley looked at her for a while and laughed. "Yes, that's what I was waiting for. I would've appreciated more notice, but I'll be fine. Enjoy being nineteen years old for a week, Hermione, and then be ready to get back to work on changing the world with a rested mind. I'll see you two Mondays from now."

Hermione sighed with relief and hugged the Minister, much to the surprise of Kingsley and a laughing Yarbet, and Kingsley muttered something incomprehensible, but Hermione was already off to the Atrium, quite nearly skipping.

Harry and Ron were waiting for her in the Atrium, deep in conversation about something, and they didn't seem to notice her as she approached. Grinning, she snuck up behind Ron and gave him a kiss on the cheek, and he jumped in the air, startled and swearing. Harry laughed until Hermione darted to him and gave him a peck on the cheek too, and she settled in between her two boys, one cursing and one blushing.

"My vacation officially starts today," she announced cheerfully. "How should we celebrate the occasion?"

"The way we planned to, maybe?" Ron grumbled.

Hermione started to scowl but decided she felt too happy for that and instead merely said, "You're right, a trip to Andromeda's sounds delightful. Shall we?"

She didn't wait for their replies and strode purposefully (almost floating) towards the Floo stations of the Ministry, the two confused teenage boys hurrying to catch up to her.

"Oh quit it Teddy, you know I don't like it when you pout," Andromeda was saying when Hermione stepped out of her fireplace with a perky grin. The older woman stared at her and Hermione was uncomfortably reminded of Bellatrix –_you are lying, filthy Mudblood, and I know it… tell me the truth or, I swear, I shall run you through with this knife!_ – but then Andromeda smiled wearily and any similarities ended. "Oh, I forgot you were coming by. Is Harry on his way?"

"Right here, Andy," said Harry as he stumbled out of the fire, and he grabbed onto Hermione's shoulder for support. "How's the little terror doing today?"

Teddy let out a bloodcurdling scream in lieu of answering.

"I see," Harry stated.

"Why are we screaming?" came Ron's voice as he too came through the connection. "Hermione, did you know you've got soot all over you?"

"Oh, thanks, Harry," Hermione replied sarcastically, throwing the black-haired boy a withering glare, and she flourished her wand and cleaned her clothing, making a pointed display of shoving Harry's hand off of her shoulder.

Teddy wailed again.

"Would you believe me," groaned Andromeda, "if I told you this wasn't something Dora did as a child?"

"Remus always was the loud sort," Ron snorted.

For his part, Teddy, whose hair was a shocking blue, slammed his fists on his high chair and let out several whimpers.

"He wants to watch another TV show," Andromeda explained. "I made the mistake of showing him one earlier today and I think it might have been the biggest error of my life."

"I feel rather the same with Ron," Harry agreed.

Hermione, despite her previous irritation, chuckled, and Ron turned a bright shade of red.

"I must say I'm somewhat surprised to see you three so early in the day," Andromeda continued as if she had been uninterrupted, or as if her grandson wasn't currently throwing a tantrum. "You made it sound like you'd be dropping by later in the afternoon."

"My meeting got out early."

"What she means is: she made us skip lunch."

"Shove it, Ronald."

"Hey! Not in front of my godson, you two."

"Sorry. Let me rephrase. Ronald, please prove your generosity of spirit by giving us all the gift of silence."

"I think I get the gist," Andromeda cut in.

Hermione and Ron glared at each other for a long while, but then he began to smirk and before she knew it they were both laughing, while Harry chuckled to himself and Andromeda looked on with an odd expression on her face.

A higher tinkling sound began, and then Hermione realized that Teddy had stopped throwing a fit and had decided to join in on the laughter. His cheeks were pink and contrasted terribly with his hair but his smile was wide and his eyes sparkled and if she didn't know it before she knew now that she really did love this little boy.

A bell rung in the kitchen and Andromeda muttered something under her breath. "Blast, that's the food. Ron, since you're so eager to eat, would you mind giving me a hand with the casserole? I need to expand the table and set a few more places and I've only got so many arms."

"Sure," Ron said, shrugging, and he followed her out of the room.

Harry and Hermione stood awkwardly for several seconds, and she was suddenly aware that they were alone together for the first time since the incident at Azkaban. Harry's hands were jutted in his pockets, and he wore a laid-back smile, something she suspected was influenced by the presence of his godson.

"I'm really sorry I didn't show you that memory, you know," he said out of nowhere. Hermione stared at him. "The one of Nurmengard. I should've shown it to you. I knew you'd be interested. I just… forgot. I wasn't thinking."

"It's fine."

"It's not," he said, and she didn't bother to argue, since Harry could be such a stubborn idiot and sometimes it wasn't worth the effort to convince him that he wasn't the world's worst friend. "I… I haven't been able to watch all of them. I had to stop. I would like you to see them with me."

"I would be delighted, Harry. So would Ron, I know."

"I thought so." He kneeled over and sat on his knees, so that he could peer closer at his godson's face. Teddy stared back at him with green eyes that matched Harry's own. "There's one, though… there's one I just want to see with you. At first. It was the last memory I tried, but I couldn't watch it all. It was my mum and dad's wedding."

Hermione felt light all of a sudden, remembered the dead town and the monument and the graveyard like none other. She remembered the ruins of a house and the snake of a woman, and she cringed.

He seemed to have noticed, because he continued, "I would like you to see it. Just you, at first. Because."

_Because you were there. Because you never left me. Because I want it to be all right to cry._

"Because I want you to know what Godric's Hollow used to be like," he finished, lamely. "I want you to see my parents, not their graves."

"Of course, Harry," she found herself saying. "I would like nothing better."

And she understood. It was his way of letting someone into something that had previously been entirely personal. It was his way of asking for help, and beginning to accept what had happened to him so that he could move on with the rest of his life. It was his way of saying thanks for always being with him, even when Ron wasn't.

She thought it entirely silly that Harry thought he needed to thank her for her support. She'd always be willing to do anything for him.

"Good," he said. He smiled, his eyes shining, and looked at Teddy. "Hey, Teddy. When you're older, there are a lot of memories I'd like to show you, as well. Your dad was a great man, did you know that? He struggled a lot in his life, and he wasn't always as brave as he wanted to be, but he got there in the end. And he wanted you to know that, if nothing else. He wanted to know what he and your mum were like, and I want you to know that, too. One day, years from now, I'm going to take you back and show you exactly what kind of man your father was."

Harry coughed, wiped his eyes. Hermione knew not to make a note of it.

"I want you to see his school days, when he was friends with my dad and my godfather. I want you to see him after his friends were all gone, when he thought… when he thought there was nothing left, and he was scared. And I want you to see how scared he was, and to know how far he came. He was one of the bravest men I ever knew. I want you to see when he taught me charms after class, and when he told me stories about my dad, and when he married your mum. All right?"

Teddy seemed to nod, and then he laughed and squeezed Harry's nose.

Harry sighed. "Well, it was a good moment while it lasted."

Hermione laughed, and, sensing the tension dissipate, turned to go see if the others needed any help. She found Andromeda standing behind her, leaning against the doorway, eyes wet and bright, and the older woman smiled at her, and Hermione, understanding, smiled back.

"I think his hair's finally settled," Andromeda said. "He likes the blue. Had it for a week."

"Do you, Teddy?" Harry asked, ruffling the boy's hair. "You like to cause a scene, just like your mum, do you?"

Then, as if determined to rebel against anything his elders said and prove his own independence, Teddy forcefully shook his head and the blue turned into a mousy brown, and when he stilled Hermione saw that there were streaks of pink across his fringe.

"You really are your parents' son, aren't you?" Harry chuckled, and he picked up the boy, hoisting him against his shoulder. "Though I'm not sure Remus would have ever gone for the pink, and Tonks would've never gone for something so flat. Nice compromise, though."

"The table's set!" Ron shouted from the other room. "Please tell me we can eat now!"

Andromeda rolled her eyes and turned to go back to the dining room. "Yes, Ron, we're just getting Teddy…"

Harry stood in the doorway for a moment, and Hermione stood with him. Finally, unable to control herself, she threw her arms around his waist and nuzzled her head into his chest, next to Teddy's shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Hermione, but I don't think I can carry you _and_ Teddy," Harry joked. "Maybe I can convince Ron to give it a go, though."

"Oh shush, you stupid boy. I just am happy, that's all."

And she was. She enjoyed the feel of Harry, knowing that he was there and alive and well. She missed these moments, when Ron would grab her hand across the table or her dad would embrace her with one arm or her mum would kiss her forehead, or even when Molly would nearly tackle her at a Weasley family dinner.

Harry wrapped his free arm around her and kissed the top of her hair. "Me too. We should probably get inside before your boyfriend punches my lights out."

"Ron can join in for all I care."

"Join in on what?" Ron hollered from the dining room.

"Hermione's trying to crush my ribcage!" Harry shouted back.

"Oh," said Ron unexcitedly. "Count me out. This casserole is delicious."

Hermione huffed into Harry's chest and felt something tug at her hair, eventually realizing that Teddy had begun to entertain himself by playing with her untamable mane.

"Teddy," Harry said, but Hermione shook her head.

"It's fine," she replied, and it was. It almost felt nice. Serene, even.

Teddy giggled.

"We love you, you know that?" she said, tilting her chin up so it rested on Harry's collarbone. "Both of us. Remus loved you so much. Sirius, too. Your parents, Dumbledore." She paused. "Hagrid, the entire bloody Weasley family, even McGonagall, I think. Teddy already adores you, and Andromeda's getting there. We all love you, you silly boy."

"You're all mental," Harry said, and she could tell he was grinning.

"Quite possibly," she agreed. "Just remember that. I love you very much, Harry Potter, and so does Ron, too, although he'll never admit it. I even love him, no matter how much I want to kill him sometimes. And even though I get caught up in everything, it doesn't change that."

"I know," he said, and he pulled her tighter, kissing her hair again before letting her go, and she reluctantly disentangled herself from him. "Now let's go get some food. My godson's starving."

Harry sat next to Teddy and Andromeda and Hermione sat next to Ron and held hands with him under the table and they ate a companionable lunch. At points Harry would smile at the two of them and she would smile back, and sometimes Ron would too (if he noticed), and Teddy laughed happily with the eyes of his father.

And it was fine, she decided. There were no ghosts haunting them, only good memories and good company, and despite everything that had went on and was going on still it was okay to be happy every once in a while. Sometimes she felt that the world was a brave and wondrous place full of opportunity and possibility, and this was one of those times.

Her eyes traveled to the mantel behind Harry where pictures of the Tonks family lay. She saw Ted and Dora and Sirius, and finally her eyes landed on Remus. The photograph was a candid one of him laughing, a teenager without a care in an empty classroom, and for a moment she thought he looked at her.

"Hermione, I'd love some more, if you wouldn't mind," Ron said, breaking her concentration – but she didn't mind.

Hermione smiled back at Remus and passed the casserole.

-

_Finite._


End file.
